Dr Bob Bowman If I was President 6 15 07

Robert M. Bowman (September 19, 1934 - August 22, 2013) was a former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force in the Ford and Carter administrations, and a former United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missions. He received a Ph.D. in aeronautics and nuclear engineering from the California Institute of Technology.Despite his involvement with space programs and defense, Bowman emerged as an early public critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, aka "Star Wars") during the Ronald Reagan administration. On The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, he called it "the ultimate military lunacy, easily overwhelmed and vulnerable". Bowman founded the Institute for Space and Security Studies and its publication Space & Security News (1983) (ISSN 1071-2569). He also authored two books on the subject of SDI and was a critic of an outgrowth of the SDI program, the George W. Bush administration's proposed National Missile Defense.

For several years Bowman was active with Veterans for Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War as a speaker.] He had also been a member of the Peace Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

In a radio interview on April 12, 2007, Bowman said:

Technological feasibility of a defensive shield is entirely irrelevant, because Star Wars has nothing to do with defense. It is an attempt to deploy offensive weapons disguised as defense.

In 1982, in his secret defense guidance document, Ronald Reagan ordered the Department of Defense to develop Star Wars weapons, and he assigned them two missions.

One: Destroy opposing satellites and seize control of space.

Two: Destroy targets on the surface of the earth from space without warning.

There wasn't a word in there about shooting down ballistic missiles. That was a smokescreen for the American people, because they knew that the American people would never approve weapons in space for offensive purposes.

Bowman was very vocal about 9/11 and disputed the..