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Show .1 ii -. 3 Co unity igh with relief ; MS shell-game no more It seems to us at the Record office that all of southern Utah heaved a collective sigh Friday when President Ronald Reagan announced that the MX missile system would not be deployed in the valleys of the Great Basin. And we sighed along with everybody else, if for no other reason than that it was finally over. And yet, there are many other reasons for the sigh of relief. After much .vacillation and much thought of economic growth in Iron County, we, also, are happy that President Reagan is taking what we consider a very well-reasoned look at multiple protective structure deployment of the system. Although we are not strategic experts, we see the President's plan as a good one. We think it is at least as good as the shell game basing mode. Certainly it is not the final solution to the problem of nuclear build-up, but it is a reasonable step in the right direction. According to President Reagan and Secre tary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, the plan for strengthening of existing forces and the putting of the MX missile in hardened silos already existing is only a stop-gap measure. But , then again, so was the shell-game basing mode. It would only have been effective for a few years to a couple of decades, depending upon which expert is speaking. We like the President's three objectives he has outlined for U.S. defense in the next few years: deterrence, capability to respond and resolve to maintain a strategic balance. We think his proposal, with adequate planning for the future "does all of that. More importantly, however, we also think that the decision last week now gives us all an opportunity op-portunity to reflect on what almost happened to us. Could we have withstood the tremendous boom-bust boom-bust cycle that almost certainly would have hit the County? Could the agriculture industry have withstood the impact to its grazing lands? Would we all have lost a commodity, almost indefinable, that we all enjoy so much and sometimes take so much for granted? We, and we include ourselves, almost allowed such to happen to us. |