By Jim Wolf, Reuters | December 17, 2004
WASHINGTON -- President Bush remains intent on deploying a multibillion-dollar shield as an "important deterrent" against ballistic missile attack, the White House said yesterday, a day after the system's first flight test in two years ended in failure.
Scott McClellan, Bush's spokesman, did not address a delay in activating the first parts of the plan, which seemed to have slipped into next year, partly because of technical difficulties. "The president remains firmly committed to moving forward on a missile defense system," he told reporters. "Given the threats that we face in this day and age, missile defense is an important deterrent."
In December 2002, Bush ordered the Pentagon to have the ground-based component operating by this year. Boeing Co. is the Pentagon's prime contractor on the project, which would be stitched into a multilayered defense.
The latest test went wrong when an interceptor rocket shut down in its silo Wednesday in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific because of "an unknown anomaly," the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said. A target missile carrying a dummy warhead had been fired 16 minutes earlier from Kodiak, Alaska.
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/12/17/bush_stands_firm_on_plan_for_missile_defense/
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