Prometheus 6

Star Warrior
If Reagan had his way on SDI, threats form North Korea and Iran would loom smaller today.
BY MELANIE KIRKPATRICK
Saturday, August 26, 2006 12:01 a.m.

ARLINGTON, Va.--In his 1983 "Star Wars" speech, Ronald Reagan famously asked, "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge . . . that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil?

Fast forward to this summer. On July 4 North Korea test-fired a long-range ballistic missile believed capable of reaching the continental U.S. The launch was a flop--the Taepodong 2 fizzled before it got off the ground--but to echo Reagan's question, what if? What would have happened if Pyongyang's missile had been heading toward Los Angeles? Could we have shot it down? "I'm confident that we could have," states Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency. "If that missile had proceeded to threaten Hawaii or the continental United States, then we would have had the ability to shoot it down. I'm confident the system would have worked."