Topic: Philip Taubman

The Boeing Co. still builds strategic bombers, commercial airliners and an extraordinary number of missiles and anti-ballistic missile interceptor systems better than anyone else in the world.

Why is the U.S. defense industry sector having such difficulty with producing so many ambitious programs like the Littoral Combat Ship, the Space-Based Infra Red System, and the Future Image Architecture program on budget and within reasonable time, compared with its triumphs of a generation ago? One major reason is that early triumphant programs were created by an earlier generation.

Underlying the $4 billion U.S. reconnaissance satellite fiasco lie deeper, uncomfortable truths almost never alluded to, let alone understood, by politicians of either major American political party: U.S. leaders and policymakers do not understand the science and technology available to them and have blind, childish, even magical faith in what it can do without beginning to understand how it really does work.

The problems afflicting the U.S. space reconnaissance program go to the heart of the way Congress and the U.S. government do business.

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller has issued a mea culpa to his staff, detailing mistakes in his handling of reporter Judith Miller.

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL