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.