Word: pentagonal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Missile-defense skeptics yearning for a fresh look at the wisdom of pumping $10 billion annually into missile defense aren't going to get it from Barack Obama when he moves into the Oval Office. The Russians - along with the two men most likely to end up running the Pentagon for the President-elect - have already made sure of that. It's a bracing reminder of just how difficult it is to counter momentum once a big-league defense program achieves what aerodynamicists call "escape velocity" - that synergy of speed and gravity that lets a vehicle soar smoothly into...
...even in a Democratic-run Pentagon the push for missile defense is going to continue. If Obama keeps Defense Secretary Robert Gates on, as some advisers are arguing he should, that would come as no surprise. "Russia has nothing to fear from a defensive missile shield," Gates said Thursday as he argued for extending the system to Europe. The current plan is to place 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a missile-tracking radar in the Czech Republic by 2014. It's strongly opposed by Russia, which views it as an unwelcome military threat in a region where...
...outgoing general who heads the Pentagon's missile defense efforts declared Wednesday that the system is "absolutely" workable. Lieutenant General Henry Obering, who is leaving his post after four years of running the program, said U.S. interests would be "severely hurt" if Obama abandons the Bush Administration's plans to expand the missile shield to Europe. "What we have discovered is that a lot of the folks that have not been in [the Bush] Administration seem to be dated, in terms of the program," Obering said. "They are kind of calibrated back in the 2000 time frame and we have...
While all that suggests the system will move full speed ahead, there was a recent ground-breaking that makes it pretty much official. Three weeks ago, the Pentagon began work on a new missile defense "Headquarters Command Center" at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about 10 miles south of the Pentagon. The $38.5 million building will be home to 300 Missile Defense Agency workers. Its planned brick veneer will match the fort's Georgian Colonial Revival style. Once finished in late 2010, the brand new missile-defense headquarters will blend in with Fort Belvoir's pre-World War II buildings. It will...
Almost immediately after Barack Obama's election-night victory, Kohono Mossman's voice mail began filling up with requests for tickets. Born and raised on Maui and now a Pentagon consultant, Mossman, 26, suddenly finds himself in charge of the hottest ticket in town as chairman of the Hawaii Inaugural ball, put on by the 400-member Hawaii State Society of Washington, D.C. He sold out the 900 tickets (at $200 each) three days after Obama's victory. It is the very first Inaugural ball thrown by the state, which proudly holds the title of the place where Obama...