Hit to Kill: The New Battle over Shielding America from Missile Attack

Even as America faces a world of difficult-to-detect, low-tech, unconventional threats, the Bush administration has put its faith in a missile defense system or "shield " to keep us all safe. There are only two problems: this may not be the sort of threat we should be focusing on and this system may not work anyway. The recent alarming news about North Korea's nuclear and missile programs has strengthened the administration's support for this extremely expensive and still unproven defense. Bradley Graham, the longtime Pentagon correspondent of The Washington Post, tells the long, strange story of how missile defense, once considered a relic of the Cold War, was revived during the 1990s to address an emerging Third World missile threat, particularly from North Korea, Iraq, and other "rogue states." Over the past half century, no proposed weapons system has drawn more argument or dollars than national missile defense, and Graham explores the origins of the enduring debate, the costs to the nation of having failed to resolve it, and the wisdom of continuing to pursue what we used to call "Star Wars."