Lucky...

They are some doozies. Maybe people could just vote Yes or No, ignoring the inflammatory comments. What inflamatory comments? If you vote that killing civilians (women and children) was a good thing all there is is: American . NO the US was at war with the Empire of Japan

The Capturing of Noriega is a good example of war crimes. That seizure was totally illegal and he is listed as a war criminal. We had ni war with Panama, so how is that? War on drugs? Give me a break. The US virtually matches the world in miltary spending so we can act like the biggest assholes to our own and to others. Perhaos one day the world will view us as the Germany, Italy and Japans of that era.

>>>>>>The Japanese military was prepared to defend their country to the last man. hen why did we kill what was probably virtually all women and children? Also, we were willing to do he same. >>>>>>>Also, the Japanese were hell bent on taking over their half of the world along with Germany taking the other half. Yep, the US and allieds were golden in what they did, up until the bombs. Don't forget that the Russians lost several times what we did and were paramount in beating the Germans moreso than were we. Did we want to let the Russians get that glory too? Hardly, we knew we hated the Russians, even tho we were allies with them and knew some sort of cold war was just around the corner. >>>>>>>>Without the A bombs dropped on Japan, I dare say WWII would have gone on for another year or two and American casualties would have increased by 50% of the total casualties in the entire war on both fronts. Of course, I'm just guessing. That's speculation, although somewhat likely, but not the only other option. At what cost do you abandon your scruples as acountry? How about a demonstration with Little Boy in a remote military target or even decimated Tokyo, then a threat to use Fat Man? There was a third bomb, so we could have used it. There were plenty of options; we chose the worst. >>>>>>>So no, it wasn't wrong. It wasn't right either. It was simply necessary. That's also speculation. WHat says a deminstration wouldn't have worked? And teh committee decided they wanted to hit a mostly urban area, was that also necessary? Intellects like Eisenhower warned against it as well.

Do't be appologetic, in the other thread you seemed pretty confident it was fine.

Yea, let's take this thread, put it to paper, enclose it in a nuclear bomb and drop it on Iran or Iraq. Maybe we can get Iran to quit seeking nukes if we kill, oh, let's say a few 100 thousand women and kids.

>>>>> But, unlike you, I don't continue to dig up the past for the purpose of trying to embarrass people. Have some embarrassing posts out there do ya? I bet. >>>>>>>>He does not have his facts straight in this thread. Which are incorrect? >>>>>>>Hiroshima did have military value as a target. Ohhhhhhhhh, it was such an integral part of the Japanes Military that we didn't once conventionally hit it during the entire war when our boys were getting killed. You're right, we were killing miitary men - OUR OWN. You can't have it both ways, if it was a key military target, WHY THE FUCK WOULD WE NOT HAVE HIT IT EARLY? >>>>>>>>>>Hiroshima was not chosen just for it's large civilian population (though that was one consideration). Just a fringe beneift to kills wives and kids - collateral damage >>>>>>>The U.S. was not wrong for using the bomb. No, they were right to intentionally refuse military targets and look for teh juciest neighborhoods.

1) Not a waste to show evidence if you would be willing to accept it, but you're not. You're stuck on the idea that the U.S. was totally wrong for using nukes and nothing anyone can say or quote will change your mind. >>>>>>Please, post some evidence. All you've posted is opinion. I've posted so many sites and you've posted none, did I miss 1? Take the oportunity now to post evidence, not opinion. Totally? I rarely use absolutes. I don't think we were totally we=rong, just lowlifes for aiming it away from military targets and at suburbs. Make an argument where you justify the US for aiming at an area that was virtually all suburb. 2) It was wrong of the Japanese to kill 16 million Chinese. It WAS NOT wrong for us to kill 250,000 (EDIT: defensless women and children) Japanese to stop them. >>>>>>>>One doesn't defend the other, just like Billy retaliating against Bobby for hitting him. And if it was sleezy for the Japanese for killing millions of innocent civilians then it must be sleezy for us to have done the same to 100's of thousands of them. By the time we fried 200-300k women and children, the attacks on China had stopped. The Japanese were in a defensive mode and there was no imminent danger to other people outside Japan. The entire SP had been retaken and there was no external threat. 3) Why would I start a flag burning thread? The only time I would consider burning a flag would be to properly dispose of one in accordance with established protocol. To distract attentio from this with another silly agenda. 4) I agree with other posters that your continued quoting of extensive posts is silly and distracts from what little credibility you have. I usually try to remove the quoted part, maybe not to successful here. OK, you got me, since I have irritating posting format, the US didn't fry 200-300k women an children.

Lucky is the kind of person who happens to be playing on a ball team who has won every game through the season, is in the last game of the state championships, and he intentionally throws the game because nobody has a right to be that good. Andhow am I throwing this? I've established all the elements. 1) At some point the military decided to aim for civilians and not military targets. 2) They killed 200-300k women and children. 3) The US killed many with their post-WWII nuclear testing in the SP and even returned the islander before it was safe so tehy could watch the effects on the thyroid.

>>>>>>Based on the research I have done shock value was needed. We were fighting a determined enemy. And to claim to be the world's liberators while killing 200-300K women and children, isn't that contradiction? We've beat enemies down before, but have we ever turned to the wives and kids of the men we were fighting? You must admit that is low. We could have let teh Russians do most of the work and do most of the dying, but the we wouldn't have such a jump on the Cold War, now would we? As well, Truman was feeling pressure after having spent 2 Billion $ on the project, so he felt he needed to push the button. >>>>>>>>>They tortured our prisoners and killed millions of Chinese for no reason other than they were Chinese. Case in point. Case in point; what is your point? Is it that we can stoop to levels of scum becuas ethey are? OK, that make sus as bad as them then. You would call any other country scum for abandoning the military targets and intentionally going after suburban families just for shock value, wanna deny that? Ends vs the means is just empty rationale. >>>>>>>>Most rational foes would have surrended after one atomic bomb. It took two for Hirohito to get the picture. Hirohito was an Imperial terrorist , and we were golden until we did teh pathetic; turned from militay targets and onto women and kids. >>>>>>>>Truman was trying to end the war and shock value was needed IMO. His goal was to save American lives and he succeeded in that. It wasn't needed, it was expeditious. Japan would have been defeated eventually. They knew Europe was closing down and the world was turning toward them. We could have dropped the bomb on Tokyo as an exhibition, then told HH that the next was going to be in his hometown, that would have likely worked. It would have certainly been honorable, unlike killing the families of their soldiers. >>>>>>>America is far from perfect. It is just a matter of how you look ar it. Gas half full or half empty... and hindsight is always 20/20. There are four cliches in there. You forgot, personal repsonsibility and rather fight it there than here. Not trying to insight, but from a liberal mind, the conservatives are just hot wind with endless cliches that are suppose to blanket bad events with said cliche. I would just like to hear the conservatives admit some of the bad things we've done and say that that is part of our past we need to learn from and that it was wrong. But neo-cons are like McCarthurs; drive and never admit wron-doing.

>>>>>>>agreed, the shock to the Emperor to get him to surrender.... Yea, even a harsh SOB like Hirohito was likely shocked to hear that a contry would be so low as bomb women and children as the mew were at war. Good point. I'm just asking and you won't answer, but does it shock you that we INTENTIONALLY at some point decided to abandon miltary targets and look for suburbia to drop our new weapons? >>>>>>>>I thought the topic was whether the cities were reserved "on purpose" for the more esoteric justification of studying the effects of the weapon. There were at least 2 main topics, the one you posted and teh post-WWII nuclear testing in the SP. They, at some point were reserved. Whether it was at teh start of teh Manhattan Project or in May 1945 mattes not, unless you continue to dodge the issue of why we turned our might on the women and children of Hiroshima to stop the war.

And it was such an integral part of the Japanese military that they didn't even conventionally bomb it once the entire was until Aug 6, 1945. Either the US military was pathetic back then or it was an administartive hdqtr with little value. Why would the US not bomb it all war long if it was important? Either: 1) It had little/no military importance, or 2) They were holding off bombing Hiroshima as they had plans to drop the Manhattan Project bombs on it at the start of the war 3) The US military was that stupid with the intel that it was there, yet not bombing it There was a reason, give me one.

Right, at one time, but if you had posted a little more you would have revealed that due to mining the seaport I believe it was had sunked and made that virtually useless. At the time of teh bombing that very article says it was of very little use. Furthermore, you still fail to address that the convention in May 45 wanted larger urban areas for shock value. Care to address that?

>>>>>If you feel it's simply "your style" to quote a post in its entirety at the top, and then re-quote each line while attacking it a piece at a time, and you're happy with that... fine, knock yourself out. I usually try to remove the original post and just have the arrows and my response, don't always do it. I like to take 1 thought at a time, whether it be 1 word or a paragraph, address it and then bring a conclusion home at the end. You can ask 5 questions in 1 sentence, so to be comprehensive I feel I need to break these down most of the time. >>>>>>>>But in this case you should know that you were too busy yelling at me to realize you're not even discussing the same point as I was, I was answering a question you asked. And on the point you were yelling at me about, I'm not even disagreeing with you. I know that, but when people start worrying about the format, which is largely like BillVon's, I think it's petty and distract from the thread. Usually a tactic of those out of gas in a thread to pick on format, spelling, ect. I realize we are on the same page as far as the substance goes. Anither example of how neo-cons stick together and libs will criticize each other, which is why we have had garbage elected 5 of the last 7 elections. BTW, I wasn't yelling. >>>>>>I see the same parallels you do when I read statements about having choose Hiroshima for producing the "greatest psychological impact", and I'm just as disgusted with the way we handled the radiation exposure cases. I wonder why the cons are so reluctant to address these issues? >>>>>This whole WWII "debate" (and I take great liberty with the word in calling it that) is a tangent from the question, "What's so great about the US that we get nukes and Iran doesn't." It was a collective effort. How many threads stay right inline? >>>>>>I'll repeat myself. By stating that I don't wish to see nuclear weapons proliferate, I'm not suggesting that we (the United States as a country) are perfect, I'm suggesting that we (humans as a species) are imbeciles. Agreed.

Well don't waste your time posting evidence, that would make you liberal. Post the military significance at the time of the bombings. Address the fact that our leaders conveined and wanted the bombs dropped in urban areas, not remote military areas where casualties might be less. Oh, don't waste your time, go start a flag burning thread or something more important like that. As for wrong, it is wrong to kill innocent Chinese and it is wrong to kill women taking their kids to school to the tune of 200k+. How does 1 wrong immunize the other? Holly shit!

Without a doubt, not ot metion Indian Schools after we decimated what, 6 million American Indians after we stole their country and have the gall to celebrate it once a year. This kind of hot button rhetoric doesn't really help your credibility. ""There are other terms to describe what happened in the Western Hemisphere, but genocide is not one of them. It is a good propaganda term in an age where slogans and shouting have replaced reflection and learning, but to use it in this context is to cheapen both the word itself and the appalling experiences of the Jews and Armenians, to mention but two of the major victims of the last century." I know it's asking volumes from the side that is exempt from that, but can you post the site I posted and perhaps draw a little more out as to what you're asking/saying. Again, quit misdirecting, just simply address the killing of 200k women and children in cities that weren't really important military bases at teh time of the bombings.

>>>>>>There's some wiggling going on, but it's not on my part. How about denial, denial that we killed mom taking her kids to school times 70,000 twice, not to mention the after-affects. Go back to your river in Egypt. Show me where I denied that. You refuse to answer it, to address it. Put it to bed, admit the US killed 200k+ women and children in 2 urban areas rather than aiming at military targets.

Whoa - that brash and in your face response really held up a mirror to the deniers on all sides. Seriously - can you explain the Egypt comment? That's a bit (hiero)cryptic. River in Egypt. Uh, anyway, back to the topic, er the issue that the US murdered 200-300k women and children for shock value.

Let me preface my response to this article by saying that it is basically an op-ed from a very conservative guy, James Kenneth Bowen. With that, that doesn't mean his facts are wrong and I am going to check those, but the opinions he asserts are just that and not fact. Now I will examine his posted fact. I think I can illustrate this authors biased opinion here: The emotive impact of the use of an atomic bomb on a Japanese city, and its usefulness as a stick with which to beat the United States, has caused many people to ignore the fact that more people died in the conventional bomb attack on Tokyo on the night of 8/9 March 1945. At Tokyo, on this one night, the bombs and resulting firestorm killed 80,000 people and injured 44,000. A stick to beat the American people? That is not objective writing, that is an opinion. Which is fine, but I wil pick the stated fact from there and address those, ignore his opinon. >>>>>>Instead, Japanese industrial facilities were mostly dispersed in residential areas. He posts no source and google produced nothing. I would love to read some substance here in citation. >>>>>It has to be remembered that the Japanese people were products of a militaristic culture dating back hundreds of years. They felt intense pride in the power of their military, and Japan's military conquests in Asia and the Pacific. And it's different in the US? >>>>>>>In April 1945, the Japanese Suzuki government had prepared a war policy called Ketsugo which was a refinement of the Shosango victory plan for the defence of the home islands to the last man. These plans would prepare the Japanese people psychologically to die as a nation in defence of their homeland. Even children, including girls, would be trained to use makeshift lethal weapons, and exhorted to sacrifice themselves by killing an American invader. To implement this policy of training children to kill, soldiers attended Japanese schools and trained even small children in the use of weapons such as bamboo spears. I researched Shosango victory plan and just Shosango and found nothing. I would like to read a cite there. But simply preparing your country for a tough war means nothing. Worrying about young girls comming at you wth bamboo sticksmeans nothing. What the author is trying to do is to create a country of tyrants thirsting for American blood to further his biased argument. But I would like to read this dcument. >>>>>>>There is no evidence that Hirohito felt any genuine concern for the suffering of Japanese civilians as the war encroached on their lives. See Professor Herbert Bix: "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" (2000), published by Harper Collins, and especially, the chapter "Delayed Surrender". What he's saying is, 'Hey, if the Japanese don;t care about their own, why should we?' So that justifies killing 10's of thousands of Japanese civilians? Pathetic. >>>>>>>>By July 1945, Japan's military and industrial resources had either been destroyed or dispersed widely and largely concealed from air attack. Dispersed to where? Citation. >>>>>>The first target was Hiroshima, a city on Japan's Inland Sea. At this time it was the headquarters of the 2nd General Army. http://web.archive.org/web/20041011111052/http://www.nuclearfiles.org/redocuments/1946/460619-bombing-survey1.html Hiroshima before the war was the seventh largest city in Japan, with a population of over 340,000, and was the principal administrative and commercial center of the southwestern part of the country. As the headquarters of the Second Army and of the Chugoku Regional Army, it was one of the most important military command stations in Japan, the site of one of the largest military supply depots, and the foremost military shipping point for both troops and supplies. Its shipping activities had virtually ceased by the time of the attack, however, because of sinkings and the mining of the Inland Sea. It had been relatively unimportant industrially before the war, ranking only significance. These factories were not concentrated, but spread over the outskirts of the city; this location, we shall see, accounts for the slight industrial damage. In other words, at the time of the bombing it was militarily insignificant and manufacturing was dispersed to the outskirts of town, where the bomb had little / no effect. >>>>>>At Hiroshima, 60,000 Japanese died and a similar number were injured. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki As many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki may have died from the bombings by the end of 1945[1], roughly half on the days of the bombings. So this author lowballs the actual numbers and ignores the ultimate deaths related to the bombs. >>>>>>The primary target on this day had been the city of Kokura where a huge army arsenal was located. I found nothing to affirm that Kokura had a huge military arsenal. Please post one. >>>>>>>The atomic bombs were dropped on two cities of military significance... They weren't at the time of the bombings. >>>>>(a) because the Emperor of Japan and his government refused to surrender and were preparing the Japanese people for a fight to the death as a nation, And we weren't? We also would have fought to the death. >>>>>>>(b) because there were no readily discernable large military or industrial targets available for conventional air attack, Oh, there had to be some or t here would be no threat. Did Japan have no air force, no navy? I believe they still did. >>>>>>>(c) because the Allies faced the prospect of incurring horrendous battle casualties from a conventional amphibious invasion of Japan. So the answer is to kill women and children? >>>>>>>Makes the case for the atomic bombs pretty clear. If it makes the US terrorists then I think you are ignoring the history of the times. It is an op-ed from a conservative guy, the opinion means zero, the substantive posted assertions are either unavailable or not valid at the time the bomb was dropped. You still haven't addressed the fact the US conveined in May 45 to establish criteria of a desireable city with which to drop the bombs. They wanted urban casualties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki The Target Committee at Los Alamos on May 10–11, 1945, recommended Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and the arsenal at Kokura as possible targets. The committee rejected the use of the weapon against a strictly military objective because of the chance of missing a small target not surrounded by a larger urban area.

Then it's working

Nice try, I think AQ is scum. I also think that of all of our real heroic actions in WWII in all their ligitimate glory, dropping the bombs was scum too, as well as the testing done in the SP post-WWII.

>>>>>>There's some wiggling going on, but it's not on my part. How about denial, denial that we killed mom taking her kids to school times 70,000 twice, not to mention the after-affects. Go back to your river in Egypt.

You left out the genocide of the Native Americans... t Without a doubt, not ot metion Indian Schools after we decimated what, 6 million American Indians after we stole their country and have the gall to celebrate it once a year. America is great in ways, horrific in ways, but I can't stand people who refuse to think the US all good and ignore recent and not so recent histiry to build their perfect dream of the way they want it to have been - revisionists.

Thanks. That needed to be said. I second the motion. And you also refuse to answer. Amazing at how the all the people who refuse to answer are the same ones who agree that misdirecting to a character attack is good idea? I answered the question. You don't like the answer possibly but I answered the question. What answer are you looking for? We dropped the atomic bombs because we are mean hateful bastads and we should be nice. Nice and war don't mix. You answered around the question. The question is: What do you think of a nation that kills mothers taking their kids to school at about 8am (time that bomb was dropped) instead of pursuing military targets?

Gtreat find. But as I wrote, it was chosen because there was nothng there but 95% sugar cane fields. I think the civilian population was minimal. It is flat and nothing is there vs Guam. That was what I wrote previously but I have never seen that letter.

That is exactly the reason historically stated for the selection of the cities. RIGHT!!!! I'm not acting as if I have some secret here, the reason we chose a set of cities was to have the largst numbers of civilian casualties, not military. They ha a set of cities from which to choose and chose Hiroshima first. Again Mike, DOESN'T THAT SHOCK YOU THAT THE US WOULD AIM AWAY FROM MILITARY TARGETS AND INTENTIONALLY AIM TOWARD CIVILIANS FOR SHOCK VALUE AND TO SHOW THE WORLD WE WILL STOOP TO ANYTHING TO WIN? Think of it, women taking their kids to school and flash *** they are vaporized. Is that war or terrorism?