mid-1980s when President Reagan, "rejecting the logic of the ABM treaty", launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). "Star Wars", as this project was often called, was designed to focus on advanced forms of technology for defending the U.S. from an attack. One of these technologies was space-based lasers capable of destroying incoming missiles and providing a "multi-layered defense" against an all out nuclear attack from Russia.(Gronlund) In the years following the conception of "Star Wars" Congress would pour hundreds of billions of dollars toward research and development, but from the start the project had problems. The number one problem was the lack of technology. The SDI promised to do things that were physically impossible. Using lasers, neutral particle beams, or having hundreds of satellites collide with an incoming ICBM was by most accounts an absurd idea. Fueled by rising amounts of criticism, Congress soon began cutting the budget on "Star Wars", thus quieting the idea of a NMD system.(Grant)Mott 5This idea remained quiet until September 21, 1991, when President Bush, after watching live on CNN Iraqi SCUD missiles being intercepted by American "Patriot" missiles high over Tel Aviv, proposed a plan to allow the "limited deployment of non-nuclear defenses to protect against limited ballistic missile strikes". In October of 1992 Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to this plan.(Grant) However, in 1992 a strongly Democratic congress reduced the funding for "Brilliant Pebbles", the most promising missile defense program to emerge from the SDI, sharply. The cuts were made primarily because of the fact that deploying such a system would be in violation of the ABM Treaty. When elected into office President Bill Clinton managed to completely destroy the whole missile defense program within two years, cutting spending from $1.8 billion in 1993, to $380 million nearly two years later, "taking the stars out of Star Wars," as Secretary...
