"US And Poland Threaten Russia"

The United States and Poland signed a deal Wednesday to place a U.S. missile defense base just 115 miles from Russia — a move followed swiftly by a new warning from Moscow of a possible military response.

Negotiators sealed the deal last week against a backdrop of Russian military action in Georgia, a former Soviet republic turned U.S. ally, that has worried former Soviet satellites across eastern Europe. It prompted Moscow's sharpest rhetoric yet over the system, which it contends is aimed at Russia despite Washington's insistence the site is purely defensive.

Poland has been a staunch U.S. ally in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It sent combat troops into Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition and had 2,300 troops deployed there at its peak. That has been reduced to about 900, who will be pulled out in October. At the same time, Poland has been building up its military presence in Afghanistan, where it currently has some 1,600 troops.

Hours after the signing, Russia's Foreign Ministry warned that Moscow's response would go beyond diplomacy. The system to be based in Poland lacks "any target other than Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles," it said in a statement, contending the U.S. system "will be broadened and modernized."

"In this case Russia will be forced to react, and not only through diplomatic" channels, it said without elaborating.

Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who leads a key appropriations panel for missile defense, praised the deal. But she said that Democratic lawmakers intend to withhold funding for the interceptors planned for Poland until they are properly tested, a move that could delay the deployment for years.

The deal follows an earlier agreement to place the second component of the missile defense shield — a radar tracking system — in the neighboring Czech Republic, another formerly communist country now in NATO.

Alina Kesek, an 82-year-old retired office clerk who lived through World War II, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland between them, and then experienced four decades of Moscow-dominated communist rule, said the Patriot missiles were a "kind of provocation" toward Russia.

"This means a threat from the Russian side," said Kesek. "I am not very pleased with this deal."

Some residents in the northern Polish town of Redzikowo, where the missile defense facility will be located, fear it may expose them to retaliatory attacks or other dangers.

Along with the main deal, the two nations signed a so-called "declaration on strategic cooperation," which is to deepen their military and political partnership.

It includes a mutual commitment to come to each other's assistance immediately if one is under attack — enhancing existing obligations both have as NATO members.

The declaration also was accompanied by a promise from the U.S. to help modernize Poland's armed forces and to place a battery of Patriot missiles there by 2012.

Rice said the deal "will help both the alliance and Poland and the United States respond to the coming threats."

Approval for the missile defense sites is still needed from the Czech and Polish parliaments. No date has been set for lawmakers in Warsaw to vote, but the deal enjoys the support of the largest opposition party as well as of the government.

       Despite the way it sounds, a "missile defense system" is an offensive weapon that enables the nation with the anti-ballistic missiles to launch a first strike without the threat of retaliation. For many years anti-ballistic missiles or ABM's, were banned because such "missile defense systems" took away the deterrent of "MAD" or mutually assured destruction. The sole reason for the Bush Administration placing the threatening ABM's in Russia's face is simply war profiteering, as I see it. Iran, which doesn't even have nuclear weapons and has no beef with Poland, is not a threat. Hopefully the US Congress and Poland's Parliament won't approve the installation of this "missile defense system" in Poland. Russia and any other nation has the right to defend itself from legitimate threats and attacks. Georgia is paying for attacking Russia allied South Ossetia and Poland will pay for giving in to the Bush Administration neocons, by purchasing these anti-ballistic missiles from the US, as I see it.

tags: russia  poland  bush  war  warpeace  condoleeza rice  neoconservatives  politics  war on terror  

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