President Obama's decision to inflatable slides cancel plans for U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic is a knife in the back for those countries. The implications for U.S. security and the transatlantic relationship are profound. Critics rightly note that the sudden announcement Thursday sends a dangerous message to allies, both in Europe and elsewhere, who rely on U.S. security guarantees.

Even those who agree with the administration's approach concede that the rollout was clumsy--middle of the night phone calls and little prior consultation. In July 2007, Senator Obama criticized his predecessor for this very thing. The Bush administration, he said, had "done a poor job of consulting its NATO allies about the deployment of a missile defense system that has major implications for all of them."

In addition to the geopolitical implications of this con-cession to Russia, there are several major problems with the administration's plan.

Questionable intelligence on inflatable water games Iran. In his announcement, President Obama stated that his decision was driven by an updated intelligence assessment of Iran's missile programs. According to the White House fact sheet, the administration appears to believe that it doesn't need to worry about Iran's possessing an ICBM capability until around 2020.

In the wake of the intelligence community's failures before the Iraq war and its mismanagement of inflatable tent intelligence regarding Iran's nuclear program, it is surprising to see the White House take intelligence about Iran's sensitive military programs at face value. It is naïve to believe that Iran, as it makes strides in its 
nuclear program, will not also speed up its efforts to develop long-range missile technology or acquire it from a country like North Korea.

This shift in the intelligence community's assessment dovetails conveniently with the views of Ellen Tauscher, the new undersecretary of state for arms control and international security and a former member of Congress, who earlier this year accused supporters of European missile defense of "running around with their hair on fire about a long range threat from Iran that does not exist."

Reliance on unproven technology. Obama and his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill have traditionally claimed that they support missile defense, but only systems that are fully tested or "proven." The problem for defenders of Obama's decision is that the system they now support is exactly what they accused the Bush system of being--unproven.

The White House fact sheet notes that by 2020, the United States will deploy the SM-3 Block IIB "after development and testing." Even James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted on Thursday that the technology is "still to be proven." The ground-based interceptors the Bush administration intended to place in Poland were much farther along than Obama's system.

Again, President Obama is doing precisely what Senator Obama found objectionable when he said, in 2007, "The Bush administration has in the past exaggerated missile defense capabilities and rushed deployments for political purposes."

Exorbitant cost. The administration has not stated what its four-phase approach will cost. General Cartwright in his briefing did argue that relying on SM-3 missiles is more cost effective than using the ground-based interceptors intended for Poland because the individual interceptors are cheaper. What Cartwright did not mention is the cost of the additional radars and bases, as well as development and testing.

Give President Obama credit for persistence. And stubbornness. And lack of wish pearl jewelry imagination. He declared again last week that his health care plan "will slow the growth of health care costs for our families and our businesses and our government." And this historic achievement will be accompanied by a dazzling array of new medical benefits that everyone will receive--guaranteed by law. Okay, you've heard this before. But that's the president's story, and he's sticking to it.

The question is, why? Does he think we're stupid? His argument has failed to persuade a sizeable majority of the American people precisely because they're not stupid. They understand the laws of addition and subtraction. When you offer more--much, much more in this case--of a good, it's going to cost more. Somebody has to coral jewlery pay for it. Yet Obama says we'll all be paying less, and that includes businesses and government.

If he could actually pull off this feat, he would indeed be the One we've been waiting for. But he can't. This is apparent whenever Obama explains where the "savings" will come from. They're from eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars" in waste, fraud, and abuse (WFA) in the health care system. Surely, he knows better. Everyone in Washington recognizes these savings are imaginary. They're offered with a wink. They never happen. President Reagan promised to turquoise jewelry slash WFA in the 1980s. The result: zilch. Where Reagan failed, Obama is not likely to succeed.

Obama may be unaware, but there are three programs--in Maine, Massachusetts, and Tennessee--currently testing his 
idea of get-more-pay-less. The evidence is already in: Expanded health care coverage costs more, an awful lot more. There are no known exceptions.

The test cases mirror Obamacare in one way or another. In 2003, Maine decided to cover the uninsured by expanding the state's Medicaid program and creating a government-run "public option" to pearl jewelry wholesale provide health insurance with subsidized premiums. Controls on hospital and doctor costs would lead to reduced premiums and savings for everyone, without tax increases, or so it was claimed. Five years later, "the system that was supposed to save money has cost taxpayers $155 million and is still rising," the Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, Medicaid enrollment has doubled to 22 percent of the state's population, and access to the public plan has been capped.

In Massachusetts, "universal" coverage was enacted in 2006 along with a requirement that everyone be insured or pay a fine. (By 2009, the fine was up to $1,068.) Again, the claim was made--a claim Obama repeats--that costs would decline once everyone was covered. Today, 97 percent of Massachusetts citizens are covered, the highest rate in the country. But costs have soared to the point the New York Times characterized them as "runaway." Spending on the state's health insurance program has risen by 42 percent. A major cause shouldn't have surprised anyone: The newly insured have flooded doctors' offices for medical care paid for by others. Now Governor Deval Patrick, a close ally of Obama, wants to impose cost controls.

The Tennessee experiment began in 1994 with one thought in mind: curbing the rise in health care costs. TennCare was established to cover everyone either on Medicaid or unable to obtain insurance. Rather than bend downward, the cost curve has steeply climbed. In a decade, spending surged from $2.5 billion to $8 billion. To cope with this, the state is cutting the TennCare rolls and reducing benefits. The program still consumes a higher share of the state budget than any Medicaid program in the country.