The buried news story of the year has to be Defense Week magazine's
                  revelation that the Pentagon's recent "successful" test of its vaunted missile
                  defense system turned out to be little more than yet another military-style
                  dog-and-pony show.
                      Proponents of the Bush administration's proposed $100 billion Maginot
                  Line in the Sky were jubilant last July 14 after a "kill vehicle" launched from a
                  remote atoll in the South Pacific destroyed a ballistic missile launched
                  thousands of miles away from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
                      On cue, conservative pundits derided those who doubted the scheme's
                  technological feasibility. In a column reprinted in this newspaper, the
                  Washington Post's Michael Kelly sneered that "the smart people were wrong."
                      "In the blink of a video screen going blinding white on July 14," Kelly wrote,
                  "it became impossible to offhandedly disdain a missile defense system
                  as 'weapons that don't work.' It does work. . . . No one can any longer
                  assert that missile defense is unattainable."
                      A Democrat-Gazette editorial addressed similar ad hominem insults to doubters.
                      Scarcely had the cheering died down than a Pentagon official admitted to
                  Defense Week that the target missile was rigged with a global positioning
                  satellite beacon that guided the kill vehicle toward it. This wasn't a test, it
                  was a combination turkey shoot and high-tech tent show revival.
                      Even if you buy the preposterous idea that "rogue state" dictators will commit
                  national suicide by launching nukes at the United States, it's hard to imagine they'll
                  equip them with GPS targeting devices. Meanwhile, how many Pentagon hoaxes
                  do these boys have to see before they learn a bit of skepticism?
 
                      Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National
                  Magazine Award.