"Blair is not a wild-eyed Cassandra raising unsupported suspicions."

Do Aeschylus some justice: Cassandra's curse for failing to bear Apollo a child was to tell the truth but never to be believed. She foretells in gruesome detail the murder of Agamemnon, as she had foretold the fall of Troy, but she was not believed in either case.

In the Agamemnon, Cassandra gives her prophecy to the chorus, which can be understood to represent the common people of a nation. Had they believed her, or had they been more decisive, the murder of the king may have been prevented--but she was not, and they were not, and Agamemnon was axe-murdered in his bath by his not-so-loving wife. This is significant because it shows just how out-of-touch Mr. Rosenbaum's comparison is here: apart from being unfair to Cassandra, perpetrating her curse in the form of a shallow stereotype, he suggests that Blair is not a prophet telling truths to deaf ears, which runs counter to the rest of this piece.

I love Ron Rosenbaum's essays, but in this one he's way off target. Lots of random half-truths pieced together into an incoherent whole. Just a few of the half-truths:

• It's not just quartz mountains, but most any kind of terrain is a formidable block to radio waves.
• If the Russians built a VLF radio system, it's no big deal. First of all, the US has had one to communicate with or subs and worldwide bases for about fourty-five years. A huge system, with antennas covering a good bit of Wisconsin and Michigan. Secondly, we *Want* the Russians to have a good communication system. Poor or unreliable communications leads to uncertainty and panic and activation of the "no contact" rules of engagement, which are looser than the rules when communications are working.
• If the Russians had a "doomsday system" of high-fallout bombs, their own territory would be the most heavily affected, not a good strategy for cultural survival and world domination.
• If they had a Doomsday system, it's obviously of no use as a deterrent if it's kept secret, or even mildly concealed. If they had such a system, simple logic would suggest they'd be giving free guided tours of the whole shebang.
• The "Spoons and String" launch system Ron supposedly heard about is upon the very slightest education and reflection, useless. A single launch facility cannot launch their missles will-nilly, even with both launch keys turned. There are built-in safeguards, whereby it takes the coordinated positive and negative actions of several launch centers to effect a launch order. Turning the two launch keys does nothing but alert the other launch facilities and the center that the launch protocol has been violated, and the other centers then disable the errant launch center by pushing a few buttons. The only way one center can release the hounds of hell is if their computer has tried and failed for some lengthy period, like 72 hours, to contact the other centers. Only then does the launch hardware enable the ability for that individual center to launch independently of the other centers as confirmation. These hard-wired launch protocols have been in place since the early 1960's.