Q: On the success of the Patriot missile.

Trainor: The Patriot missile which was designed to shoot down airplanes and not missiles was used against the SCUDs as they were oming in and we were all treated on television to the sight of the big explosion in the sky but then we were little surprised to see another explosion on the ground shortly thereafter and figured what's going on? Well, the truth of the matter is that the Patriot was pretty much doing its job as the government claimed, but the job wasn't quite proper. The Patriot missiles were going after the hottest part of the incoming SCUD, which was the tail, and would blow up in proximity to the tail and blow up that part of the SCUD, but the payload which was the warhead was on the front of the SCUD. And that was unaffected and it would simply tumble to the earth and freefall and explode on the ground. So in a sense yes, they were getting the SCUDs, but by the same token they weren't getting the warhead on the SCUD, which was doing ... doing the damage. And so on both of these areas in terms of the SCUDs and the Patriot, the claim was made that the government was deceiving the people by these optimistic reports during the war, when in fact the government thought that what they were reporting was accurate.




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