PROfitable

The Russians love their abbreviations and have adopted the acronym PRO as the short form of "missile defense" in their language. It's rather humorous, because the Russians are of course CONTRA missile defense. To confuse the matter, a Czech civic group has now adopted the name PRO to mean FOR missile defense. The Russian media use every opportunity to complain about Pentagon PROvocation and attempts to draw new countries into the PROject. One Russian commentator suggested that the U.S. military-industrial complex is trying to PROvoke a new cold war as a way to keep defense spending at the astronomical levels seen since the invasion of Iraq. One of our readers, Martin Velek, suggested that the Russians might be secretly happy about the U.S. missile-defense initiative, because it could give their military-industrial complex access to a pile of new PROfits too. [Czech Republic MDI United States radar station base]