President Obama recently nominated one of the biggest missile defense critics, Philip Coyle, to a high-level advisory position- the Associate Director for the National Security and International Affairs, Office of Science and Technology Policy. In this role, Coyle will be advising the President on national security issues. Coyle told Reuters last year:
Missile defense is the most difficult development the Pentagon has ever attempted and if it (the threat) were real, the proposed missile defense systems couldn’t deal with it anyway.
This soon-to-be-adviser will be whispering misleading conclusions like this in the president’s ear, contradicting experts such as General Henry “Trey” Obering, former Director of the Missile Defense Agency.
As Obering stated when speaking about missile defense testing in The Heritage Foundation’s 33 Minutes documentary, “Our testing has shown not only can we hit a bullet with a bullet; we can hit a spot on a bullet with a bullet.”
President Obama has made his approach towards national security and missile defense very clear: he wants to lessen the defense against long-range ballistic missiles and concentrate on defenses against short to medium range missiles, and now he is appointing people who will help support this trend shifting away from comprehensive missile defense.
