A November 22nd USA Today article by Mimi Hall and David Jackson titled START ratification becomes major test for Obama reports:

Opposition in the Senate has intensified since Republicans narrowed the Democrats’ majority in the Nov. 2 elections. Now, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, a GOP leader key to rounding up or quashing votes, says consideration of the treaty should wait until next year because the Senate has too much other work on its plate between now and Christmas break.

Kyl says the nation needs to focus on “complex and unresolved issues” related to maintaining and modernizing its aging arsenal before

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Reporting on the Senate’s first hearing on the New START agreement, The New York Times Peter Baker reports on May 18th:

The Obama team deflected the criticism, insisting that nothing in the treaty would inhibit missile defense plans.

Specifically, here is what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified:

The treaty does not constrain our missile defense efforts. … Nothing in the New START Treaty constrains our missile defense efforts.

This language mirrors the original White House fact sheet on New Start which read:

The New START Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S.

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Journalist Jim Wolfe’s April 15th Reuters item titled “US plans full European missile shield in 8 years” fails to tell the whole story of recent testimony by Obama officials before Congress.

The article reported:

Bradley Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, said in reply to a question at a hearing of a House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee Thursday….the Obama administration was putting ‘proven’ sea-based and land-based missile shields into Europe as quickly as possible as part of a revised shield announced last September to any Iranian ballistic-missile strike.

That statement is patently false. The European … Continue Reading

An April 9th Associated Press Anne Flaherty article claims “Republicans expected to line up behind New START.” Flaherty reports:

Despite near gridlock in the Senate, Republicans were expected to swing behind a new arms control treaty with Russia that President Barack Obama said they will like, even though some are reserving judgment until Obama can assure them the pact won’t set back U.S. defenses against other potential foes such as North Korea and Iran.
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Republicans, however, did not rush to either praise or criticize the treaty. They want Obama to promise it won’t undercut the nation’s ability to set up missile

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Covering President Barack Obama’s decision to betray promises to Poland and the Czech Republic to build ground based missile defense installations on their countries, the Associated Press‘ Anne Gearan and Desmond Butler report in their September 17th lead paragraph:

President Barack Obama on Thursday shelved a Bush-era plan for an Eastern European missile defense shield that has been a major irritant in relations with Russia. He said a redesigned defensive system would be cheaper and more effective against the threat from Iranian missiles.

The rest of the Gearan Butler story is mostly fair but they never note existing independent evidence that … Continue Reading

Reuters missile defense reporter Jim Wolf has struck again. This time his June 16 article “General ’90-percent-plus’ sure on U.S. Missile Defense” selectively quotes some experts and fails to identify others as long time anti-missile defense crusaders.

Wolf’s article begins by noting that Vice Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright recently told Congress he believed the odds of defeating a long-range North Korean missile attack were “ninety percent plus.” Wolf then immediately quotes Lisbeth Gronlund who he identifies as “an expert on missile defense at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” Gronlund … Continue Reading

Reporting on Defense Secretary Roberts Gates’ decision to deploy the SBX sea-based radar system to Hawaii in anticipation of a new North Korean missile test, the Los Angeles Times‘ Julian Barnes writes on June 18th:

According to reports in Japanese media, the North Koreans appear to be preparing to conduct their next long-range test around July 4. Experts believe that because the last long-range missile test failed, Pyongyang has more to prove and may see another test as necessary.

But the April 5th North Korea missile test was far from a failure. Award winning journalist Craig Covault reports:

New details

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Where the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick and R. Jeffrey Smith are not flat out wrong in their May 19 article “U.S.-Russian Team Deems Missile Shield in Europe Ineffective”, they are flat out lazy. First the facts.

The EastWest Institute recently released a report titled “Iran’s Nuclear and Missile Potential: A Joint Assessment by U.S. and Russian Technical Experts.” The report concludes that a ballistic missile threat from Iran is not imminent, and that planned US missile defense would not be effective and threaten US-Russian cooperation.

Warrick and Smith wrote that “[m]oreover, if Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that … Continue Reading

In the New York Times week in review published on April 25, 2009, William Broad long-time science writer for the paper discusses the debate over the effectiveness of the North Korean missile launch on April 5. The article purports to represent the state of debate on North Korea missile developments. The analysis ignores basic facts known about the test.

In a recent public address, Lieutenant General Patrick O Reilly, director of the Department of Defense’s Missile Defense Agency stated that the most recent analysis of the North Korean flight indicates that the first and second stage … Continue Reading

The April 6, William Broad article “North Korean Missile Launch Was a Failure, Experts Say” in the New York Times diminishes the scope of the threat posed by the North Korean ballistic missile program by omitting some key facts.

Analysis of the Taepodong-2 missile flight path does indicate that a payload was not delivered into earth orbit as the North Koreans claim. In this respect, the effort as a “space launch” did fail. Broad’s conclusion, however, that “[a]nalysts dismissed the idea that the rocker could represent a furtive, calling the failure consistent with past North Korean fumbles,” is both based … Continue Reading

The March 16, 2009 USA Today headline, “Reports question U.S. shield of Europe” by Ken Dilanian fueled an already on going controversy about the future of ground-based missile defense sites that are to be emplaced in Poland and the Czech Republic to counter a potential Iranian long-range ballistic missile threat against Europe and the United States. The headline refers to a report by the Government Accountability that was released later that day and a Congressional Budget Office study released earlier that month. The article, however, actually drew from a wide variety of sources to question … Continue Reading