Opinion: Sometimes a Pentagon missile logo is just a missile logo

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A brief online kerfuffle raged this week over a perceived similarity between a newer military agency logo and that trademark Obama O circle from the presidential campaign.

According to an initial conspiratorial theory, the newest logo for the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (above, right) bears a remarkable resemblance to the Obama campaign logo. And is that perhaps some potentially sinister insinuation of the Muslim crescent in there too?

The answer is, simply: Not.

According to Richard Lehner of the MDA, the agency added the second, more contemporary, three-colored logo to its recruiting materials three years ago as a cost-saving procedure over the continuing five-color logo. The newer design was added to the agency’s updated website last fall, where both now appear.

For those of us who in high school days may have been symbolically challenged by some Shakespearean lines, Lehner provides this explanation:

‘The symbolism of the design is that it shows missile defense as a global system to defend the US, our deployed forces and allies and friends, as depicted by the path of an interceptor missile and a flash (not a star) denoting a missile intercept.’

Another way to explain ‘missile intercept’ is an intentionally premature explosion of an incoming enemy armament caused by our own missile, a super laser beam and/or a secret method that we’d have to kill you for if we told you about.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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