Scotty! I Need Those Engines!

We're not the types who are constantly going around spreading doom and gloom or worrying about the color of the threat level, particularly now that the election is over and we don't have a threat level anymore, so we have to admit we're becoming more than a little annoyed at the hand wringing and nay saying each time our Commander in Chief's missile protection umbrella fails as it did again yesterday.

Common sense tells us that it's only a matter of time before Osama gets the technology to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. OK a matter of time in a geologic sense, but why wait when we can spend the billions of dollars that we'll save by privatizing social security now?

Besides, this failure wasn't a failure of the system like the previous five, it was a "malfunction in support equipment at the launch site." In other words, we couldn't shoot off. Something about a fuse being overloaded or some such. Physical Plant is handling it.

Now before you cynics get all uppity and start talking about how can we put our faith in a system that doesn't work, even when it does work, rest assured that, had this been an actual attack, there were backup measures to launch the missile. True, Lieutenant Bob got the matches wet and didn't have a lighter this time, but bids are being solicited for a gross of Bic disposable lighters which will be kept in a secure area next to the commissary.

Besides, this is cutting edge science. You can't expect things to go smoothly every time. As the Defense Department says:

Officials stressed that the last two tests were far more realistic, and thus more technologically challenging than the previous ones.

"This was a much more robust and difficult test," said Chris Taylor, another spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.

See? We're failing much more sophisticated tests today than in the past.