I'm sure Dick...Cheney's lump-of-coal of a heart warmed to the extent that it could when the military determined that they could take a useless hunk of space-based chicken-shit and salvage a bit of chicken salad...by shooting at it with a big old gun--watch out Harry:
The military will try to shoot down a crippled spy satellite in the next two weeks, senior officials said Thursday. The officials laid out a high-tech plan to intercept the satellite over the Pacific just before it tumbles uncontrollably to Earth carrying toxic fuel.
Oh yeah--because this administration has sooo consistently demonstrated its concern for toxic hazards.
More seriously, I think this website (found using that remarkable research tool "the Google") understands it as well as anyone:
Some observers are now wondering whether it might all be a very cleverly orchestrated story by the US Government, designed to get maximum global attention to an ASAT demonstration. If we entertain that notion for a moment: with this ASAT demonstration, they would hit two blows in one:
a) They send a high profile geopolitical message to the Chinese, and to the homefront, in answer to last year's Chinese ASAT test on Fengyun 1C. Basically, this message says: "you/they can shoot satellites out of the sky, okay. But remember we can too, so don't even dare to try ours or we will do the same to yours/theirs..."
b) They give some rendement to an otherwise worthless assemblage of several millions worth of inoperative scrap metal now uselessly orbiting this planet.
Of course, given that this is the Cheney-Shrub administration, well...maybe a bit of soft bigotry and low expectations should...be expected:
In many ways, the task resembles shooting down an intercontinental nuclear missile, although this target is larger, its path is better known and, if a first shot misses, it will continue to circle the Earth for long enough to allow a second or even a third try.
And then Bush'll call for a surge.
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