White House Scraps Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield - NYTimes.com

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White House Scraps Bush's Approach to Missile Shield

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By PETER BAKER
Published: September 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama scrapped his predecessor's proposed
antiballistic missile shield in Eastern Europe on Thursday and ordered
instead the development of a reconfigured system designed to shoot down
short- and medium-range Iranian missiles.
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Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates with Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a briefing at the Pentagon on
Thursday.

In one of the biggest national security reversals of his young
presidency, Mr. Obama canceled former President George W. Bush's plans
to station a radar facility in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based
interceptors in Poland. Instead, he plans to deploy smaller SM-3
interceptors by 2011, first aboard ships and later in Europe, possibly
even in Poland or the Czech Republic.

Mr. Obama said that the new system "will provide stronger, smarter and
swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies" to meet a
changing threat from Iran. Administration officials cited what they
called accumulating evidence that Iran had made more progress than
anticipated in building short- and medium-range missiles that could
threaten Israel and Europe than it had in developing the
intercontinental missiles that the Bush system was more suited to counter.

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