[Peace-discuss] book review

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

This came in from a journalist friend.


Subject: Fw: Loring Wirbel's new book: Star Wars:
US Tools of Space Supremacy

Star Wars: US Tools of Space Supremacy" provides a
fresh look at the role of space as an enabler of
the Bush administration's plans for endless
preventive war.  It debunks the benign notions of
missile defence, and expands the definition of
space supremacy beyond that of weapons in space,
to include the unilateral misuse of space-based
intelligence, communications, and targeting
technologies.

Loring Wirbel shows how space militarization forms
a key part of the explicit unilateral
empire-building of the Bush administration.  The
book is also a stark reminder that preventive war
theory did not originate with Donald Rumsfeld.
First used as a term by Reagan, 'Star Wars' was an
idea rooted in the Cold War.  Wirbel argues that
the current space supremacy doctrine was first
developed in the immediate aftermath of the Cold
War, in the early days of the Clinton
administration.  Giving a historical overview of
governmental policies through the 1980s and 1990s
to the present, Wirbel shows that 'Star Wars' is
an idea that never went away.

Examining the evolution of space-based technology,
and the way it is now used in a variety of
settings including intelligence operations and
on-the- ground military campaigns, this is a
comprehensive critical guide to the real aims and
capabilities of US space technology and the
missile defence program.

Loring Wirbel has been involved in military
conversion and peace work for 25 years, and has
studied technical intelligence and civil liberties
issues for nearly as long.  He is currently
editorial director for communications initiatives
at CMP Media LLC, headquartered in New York and
London.  He has worked for daily newspapers in the
US southwest, and has held key positions in
leading technology publications such as Electronic
Engineering Times."   Pluto Press,  London -
Sterling, VA


     Loring connects about as many dots in 155
pages as is humanly possible.  It is a bit of an
insiders book, but it deserves a much wider
audience than that.  If our political reality is
to change more people have to know what is really
going on.  The book should be in bookstores soon
and is also available on-line at Amazon.
Bill Sulzman
P.O. Box 915
Colorado Springs, CO 80901
Ph 719 389 0644