That flaw, critics say, is the belief that a multi-billion-dollar, technologically challenging missile-defense system -- the so-called "Star Wars" program to be headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs -- could have protected the nation from hostile attacks.

The terrorists' crude tactics on Sept. 11, as well as the subsequent anthrax mailings, drive home the futility of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a sophisticated defense against that Cold War--era threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles wreaking surprise attacks on the homeland, critics charge.

The terrorists, they insist, demonstrated that America's post--Cold War vulnerability lay in the difficulty of defending against unpredictable "asymmetric warfare" and are more likely to smuggle a suitcase-sized nuclear bomb into the country for detonation than attempt a long-range or air attack.

But such arguments, so far, have fallen on deaf ears in Washington. Shortly after Sept. 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved $8.3 billion in funding for missile defense, its Democratic leaders backing off a previous pledge to cut the amount by $1.3 billion. And missile-defense advocates, including Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., are pushing the program as hard as ever.

The reason, critics say, is simple: Star Wars is not really about defending the nation in the first place. The reality, rarely discussed by the media or politicians, is that the so-called missile-defense program is simply the first phase in a long-term program to establish military superiority in space, a realm that has historically been largely reserved for peaceful purposes.

"Sept. 11 ultimately is irrelevant," said Bruce Gagnon, director of the Florida-based Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, a grass roots peace organization. Missile defense, Gagnon believes, is merely a Trojan horse for the military's real objectives.

"It's never been about defense. It's always been about controlling space, dominating space, denying other countries access to space, and the U.S. being the master of space. And that isn't a defensive posture."

The Pentagon's future vision of space promises to be a boon to aerospace contractors, which have unprecedented influence within the Bush administration.

It will also have a significant impact on Colorado Springs, which is, under a reorganization already ordered by the administration, "the center of gravity for military space," according to Howell Estes, a retired four-star general and former head of the U.S. and Air Force space commands.

Already home to the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) command center inside Cheyenne Mountain, the Space Command program at Peterson Air Force Base just east of the city is expanding and will have "cradle-to-grave" responsibility for nearly all U.S. military activities in space.

"There's no question about it," said Estes, now a Springs-based aerospace consultant.

Air Force Space Command is already charged with operating America's land-based intercontinental nuclear missiles, warning against incoming missiles, launching and operating satellites, conducting surveillance and testing anti-ballistic missile technology.

Air Force Space Command will also be responsible for all future expansion of military force into space, including technology that the United States could conceivably use to attack its enemies.

The Air Force calls Colorado Springs the "capital of military space." Disarmament advocates, in turn, refer to the city as the Death Star from which a future U.S. space empire will project its global power.

"It is the U.S. mission to dominate space -- to basically annex it," said Bill Sulzman, who runs the organization Citizens for Peace in Space out of his small cottage in the Springs. "The real goal is permanent pre-eminence."

Sulzman and others are drawing from the military's own documents, whose language is remarkably blunt. Almanac 2000, a publication of Air Force Space Command, states overtly that the Air Force must be "globally dominant" in space.

"Using space gives the U.S. the upper hand in maintaining peace, or if necessary, in waging war," the publication declares.

Saber-rattling language is ubiquitous throughout Air Force Space Command, which also has a unit at Schriever Air Force Base, southeast of the city, called the Space Warfare Center, and boasts that its role is "defending America through the control and exploitation of space."

The documents revealing the military's plans aren't top secret. Most are publicly available on military Web sites.

The Space Commission 2001
The most recent major report -- and one that is already having an impact at Peterson -- was issued by the Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization on Jan. 11.

Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense - AFP Photo Copyright

The Space Commission, as it is known, was appointed by the Republican congressional leadership and headed by Donald Rumsfeld, who subsequently became Secretary of Defense.

"We know from history that every medium -- air, land and sea -- has seen conflict," the report states. "Reality indicates that space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the U.S. must develop the means both to deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space. This will require superior space capabilities."

Those capabilities may not be used exclusively for defensive purposes such as shooting down incoming missiles, the report suggests. The document notes that "having this capability would give the U.S. a much stronger deterrent and, in a conflict, extraordinary military advantage."

Specifically, military plans call for developing weapons such as the space-based laser, a joint project of the Pentagon and aerospace contractors TRW, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Other projects also include space-based radar and various surveillance systems, as well as jamming devices to disable enemy satellites.

Dan Smith, chief of research for the Washington think tank Center for Defense Information, is alarmed by the idea of placing weapons in space. Smith, a retired army colonel at the center, which is led by former military personnel, points out that while the United States and several other countries already have military satellites, space has until now been free of weapons. Changing that will take the arms race to a new realm, he says.

"As soon as we put weapons in space, or any country does, you cross a psychological threshold," Smith said. "Putting weapons in space would be a gratuitous expansion of what in the military language we would call 'battlespace.'"

"It'll be destabilizing," Gagnon agreed. "It's going to create a new arms race. It's going to make life more insecure for America and everyone else. And certainly, it's morally and ethically wrong to move the arms race into the heavens."

Proponents of the military's plans, meanwhile, downplay the talk of weapons, warfare and dominance. Estes, who served on the Space Commission, insists the main objective is to protect U.S. space assets against enemy attack.

"This nation is extremely dependent on space," he said, pointing out the increasing importance of satellite technology for both military and civilian uses, such as telecommunications, navigation and weather forecasting.

"This dependence, in our minds, created a huge vulnerability," Estes said. "We really have not done very much to ensure the protection of our satellites."

Threats against satellites could include enemy attempts to jam or hack into them, or weapons designed to physically disable them or knock them out of orbit. To encourage the military to pay more attention to such threats, the Space Commission has recommended a series of organizational changes within the Air Force aimed at giving space programs a higher priority and stronger management structure.

Colorado's Sen. Allard, who introduced legislation this year to implement the commission's recommendations, also emphasizes the importance of protecting telecommunications, weather and navigation satellites.

"For example, in the state of Colorado, it's our satellite systems that lets us know if there's a flood happening in one of our river basins," Allard said by way of example. "To me, that's important. I lived in the city of Loveland. We lost over 100 people [in the Big Thompson flood] a couple of decades back because there was inadequate warning."

Estes disputes the notion that the military is planning to place weapons in space, even though he headed the effort to develop the U.S. Space Command's Long Range Plan, which calls for developing such weapons and urges that the U.S. president "have the option to deploy weapons in space." The point, according to Estes, is to have the technology available but not necessarily to deploy it.

"We are very careful to say that it's not our business to decide when the nation puts weapons in space," he explained. "That is a decision which rests with the leadership of the country. The objective of the Long Range Plan is to ensure that should a president find it is in the U.S. national interest to do that, that we have options available."

Estes says current recommendations do not call for actual production of any weapons, except the space-based laser -- which could potentially be used to zap enemies on Earth from outer space.

The laser, he says, is for "demonstration" purposes only, because international treaties prevent the United States from developing an operational system.

Allard says the space-based laser would be purely a defensive weapon. "We're not talking about weapons, offensive weapons, in outer space," he said. "We're talking about defense."

Neither Estes nor Allard is willing to acquiesce to the position taken by critics like Smith, Gagnon and Sulzman, who favor a global treaty prohibiting all weapons in space. Currently, only "weapons of mass destruction" are illegal in space under the international Outer Space Treaty, which the United States has signed.

However, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has introduced legislation in Congress that would bar the United States from deploying any kind of space-based weapons.

"I don't think that's a bad idea," Allard said of Kucinich's bill. "But I think that if they're carrying that to the point where they want to disarm our ability to defend ourselves and our assets in outer space, then I think it goes too far."

Estes, likewise, believes writing off any kind of weapons in space -- even defensive ones -- would be a mistake. "This notion that space is going to remain a peaceful area in the future, for as long as we can see, is absolutely putting our heads in the sand," he said. "I mean, give me a break."

The need to protect commerce against disruption by enemies, Estes says, resulted in the militarization of land, air and sea. "Space is going to be no different."

Sulzman calls that rationale a "self-fulfilling prophecy," but Estes disagrees.

"It is just a fact of life," the former general said. "The fact of the matter is, man is a warlike being. We are just not very peaceful the way we do our work around the world, regardless of what it is -- whether it's political, economic or military. And unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast, and we just can't be na�ve about it."

As Estes acknowledges, a key historical role of the military has been to protect commerce. And opponents divine more sinister motives behind pushing the militarization of space, namely protecting the interests of multinational corporations around the globe.

Indeed, the U.S. Space Command itself makes the connection between globalization and the importance of U.S. military superiority. "The global economy will continue to become more interdependent," observes the Long Range Plan.

"Economic alliances, as well as the growth and influence of multinational corporations, will blur security agreements ... The gap between 'have' and 'have-not' nations will widen -- creating regional unrest."

To Sulzman, the message is obvious.

"That's not talking about protecting your borders," he said. "That's being the enforcement arm of the global economy."

And when the United States talks about achieving "global dominance" through space, it begs the question of whether fewer than 5 percent of the world's population has the right to dominate the other 95 percent, Sulzman says. "People in the rest of the world aren't necessarily going to go along with this," he noted.

Estes, meanwhile, calls the military's use of the term dominance misguided. "I don't agree with domination either," he said. "That's a bad choice of words."

What the word was meant to convey, he says, is that the United States should enjoy military superiority in a specific conflict situation.

"What we're trying to do is say that we need to ensure our access to space," he said. "We need to ensure access for both commercial, civil and military space, and we need to be able to deny those same things to an adversary in a time and place of our choosing, if it's in our national security interest."

Unfortunately, Estes points out, most people seem to take the word dominance to mean exclusive control of space at all times. "I would tell you, there isn't anybody who thinks we ought to dominate space. I don't know one single person."

Elliot Pulham, president of the Colorado Springs--based Space Foundation, agrees. The philosophy of the foundation, a national nonprofit whose membership and revenue base include the major aerospace corporations, is that "space activity in all of its forms benefits all of us."

Pulham, a former Boeing executive, says U.S. space superiority will be for the good of people around the globe. It will enable the U.S. military to be a "force for freedom" that continues to promote liberty and human rights everywhere, he says.

"If you look at Bosnia, you look at the Gulf War and so forth, we used all the capabilities that we had in what we felt was a good, just cause, in helping other people," he said. "I would say the same very much applies in space."