The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate passed by huge majorities the "National Missile Defense Act" as written by the GOP leadership. That original text called for deployment of the defensive system "as soon as technologically possible".

But within hours of the Senate's 97-3 vote, a pair of riders that the Democratic leadership offered in return for dropping their longstanding opposition to such a plan started to receive some attention.

For the riders make certain that there will be no U.S. national defense against ballistic missiles unless Congress approves the specific plan, again by another round of future votes.

One rider states that the budget for any specific missile defense system must be approved entirely separately, just as any other weapons program must receive funding. Why is this important? Because in last week's action neither the House nor the Senate actually funded any money at all for missile defense.

The second rider states that any specific missile defense plan must be reapproved by the Senate and must pass "treaty compliant" standards. That is, any specific configuration of a national missile defense system must be approved by the parties agreeing to existing missile reduction agreements.

Since the only other party to such agreements - the Russian Federation- has rejected the notion of the U.S. actually deploying - as opposed to researching - a national missile system, it would appear that the idea is as dead as a doornail, Senate and House votes notwithstanding.

The third act to this saga, and one that has also received little attention -is the simple fact that the Clinton administration will still have to actually spend any money appropriated for missile defense by the Congress. Which, in last week's action, didn't appropriate any at all. Clear enough?

Congress approved the idea of a national defense against ballistic missiles. But didn't fund anything to do so. And no system was actually approved at the time. And any future system must pass muster with the biggest opponents of the idea, the Russians. And so it goes.

Perhaps ultimately national missile defense, which has been talked about but never deployed for decades since the first Nixon administration, will have better luck than theater defense.

Last week, on its sixth try, the THAAD system again missed hitting its intended target, the Hera warhead. And while BMDO originally called the results of the clearly failed test "a high altitude flyby", John Pike's Federation of American Scientists had it right the first time. "THAAD-0, Hera-6", said FAS. Missile defense? Stay tuned.