The London Times

Nearly a decade after it was supposed to have ended, the Cold War is being reinvented as a costly game of nuclear sabre rattling, with an economically devastated Russia as the main player. Earlier this month, a state-of-the-art ballistic missile took off from a military cosmodrome in Russia's Arctic northwest, landing with chilling accuracy on a firing range on the Pacific coast 6,000 miles away. A military spokesman said the test had been planned for months. Similar explanations were given for two recent encounters with echoes of a more dangerous time - when United States jets scrambled to head off two long-range Russian Bear bombers near Alaska last week, and when Nato fighters intercepted another pair over Iceland at the height of the Kosovo conflict. Yet these sorties were anything but routine. The last time Russian bombers buzzed the North Atlantic so brazenly was 11 years ago. As its soldiers go unpaid and its conventional weapons rust in storage, Russia is pouring its limited funds into new nuclear submarines, maintaining its nuclear strike aircraft and building a 21st-century missile system... Russia's larger goal is clear: by playing to its hard-won strengths as a nuclear power, it intends to demand the respect on the world stage that it has so far failed to earn.

I was really hoping the Russians would loose their weapons after the rollover due to irreversable computer error. This is why we need to build a 21st century missle defense system ala Star Wars. Maybe secretly TPTB have already done so?

-- The Count of Meijer Crisco (40@cansof.course), September 25, 1999

Answers

from HIS WORD.>PSALM 37: 1-2 Fret not yourself because of evildoers,those that WORK unrighteousness,2.For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, & wither as the green herb.[GOD is a consuming fire]

-- GOD will avenge. (dogs@zianet.com), September 25, 1999.

Hi Count. I'll give you three guesses who is forcing Russia into another nuke arms race; Kosovo sealed the deal. Long live the peaceniks!

-- o's (spaghetti@cans.uck), September 25, 1999.