In the continuing saga of the anti-missile defense boondoggle, look at Slate‘s coverage of what’s happening “In Other Magazines”:
A superb article describes how the Pentagon is fixing an important
missile-defense test scheduled for July 7. In the
‘Potemkin’ test, the missile will travel at an
artificially low speed, will have only one lame
decoy, and will travel on a preset path that the
defense team already knows. The test’s success will
almost certainly ensure that the United States will
build and deploy a missile defense.
Is the Pentagon really calling this test “Potemkin”, or is the commentator in the quote above just evoking the phrase “Potemkin villages”?
