If preemptive strikes are justified....Follow

Money for nuthin' and your chicks for free...

Totem

Hahah! Exact song I'm listening to!


Play the guitar on MTV!



What we know and what Japan knew are different things.

Smash, I believe the parallell he's trying to draw isn't related to 9/11, but the fact that nukes didn't hold the same connotations then as they do now.

In our percetion, then, they made a big boom. Now, they make things glow green.

Thing is, Japan didn't believe us. They thought we just knocked out communications and that sort of thing.

Smash, I believe the parallell he's trying to draw isn't related to 9/11, but the fact that nukes didn't hold the same connotations then as they do now.

In our percetion, then, they made a big boom. Now, they make things glow green.


No, we were well aware of the effects of radiation sickness. More than one nuclear scientist had died of it.

There was no confusion over the effects.

No, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were specifically chosen for both their strategic logistical importance and the topography they reside in. One is in a bowl, the other is flat. These spots were selected because they could in essence kill two birds with one stone.

No **** being made up, just historical fact.

Totem

Smash, you're reading more into my answers than what is intended. I am not saying they used two bombs because they thought Hiroshima's bomb might be a dud -- which was a concern of theirs since one had been used in NM --but because thre wasn't any data on the effect at different altitudes and types of terrain.

Hiroshima was logistically important because of the ball bearings manufactured there (as I recall) and Nagasaki was a major military seaport.

Totem

No, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were specifically chosen for both their strategic logistical importance and the topography they reside in. One is in a bowl, the other is flat. These spots were selected because they could in essence kill two birds with one stone.

They were selected frm an arbitrary target list based on weather and previous targeting concerns. The most important concern of course was the psychological impact.

Kyoto was pulled off the list at the last minute because of the cultural genocide that would have caused.

At the time bombing of civilian population centers was considered not only a acceptable, but a valid way to conduct war. Rember the fire bombings in Germany, those killed many more people than the Atomic bomb droping in Japan.

Also, I do belive Japan initiated the war with America, so had to expect some repercussions for this.

We dropped the bomb because Americas leaders and military concluded that a land invasion of Japan would have cost close to 2 million lives. Some 500,000 of those would have been American soliders, the rest would have been Japanese soldiers and civilians.

We did the right thing, and in no way can you compare that what happened here to 9-11.

Back on Topic: An attack against a civilain center with no other thought then to create terror and panic among the population is wrong, under any circumstances.

America's attack against Iraq was and is bad policy. When we invaded Afghanastan we did the right thing there, and we had support of the world because we were in the right. Our attack on Iraq was wrong, and done for 3 reasons.

1) Oil
2) Grudge about Sadam offering a bounty for W's father and families death
3) To put pressure on Iran from both sides with nations friendly to the United States.

Our attack in Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism.

Back when I was in high school, my electric engineering teacher worked in the nuclear weapons development department, and they would lug radioactive **** around all day without protection - And this was in the late 40s. He has Beryllium poisoning, among with some other things, to show for it.


So, with my real life experiences involving it, I'm going to say as a whole, we didn't take radiation sickness very seriously at all

No, Smash, the targets weren't arbitrary outside of favorable conditions for setting them off and examining the results afterwards. The cities were chosen for a combination of the reasons we have both said, but there was nothing ad hoc about the selection process.

Totem

At the time bombing of civilian population centers was considered not only a acceptable, but a valid way to conduct war. Rember the fire bombings in Germany, those killed many more people than the Atomic bomb droping in Japan.


Good point. They probably close to as morrally bankrupt as the nuclear weapons were, but not quite. No one living in Dresden dies of cancer today caused by the fire bombing.


Also, I do belive Japan initiated the war with America, so had to expect some repercussions for this.


No relevance.

Completely arbitrary and could be used to justify anything. I guess it would have been ok to rape Japanese schoolgirls with razor studded dilidos then. I mean, hell, they was askin for it.



We dropped the bomb because Americas leaders and military concluded that a land invasion of Japan would have cost close to 2 million lives. Some 500,000 of those would have been American soliders, the rest would have been Japanese soldiers and civilians.


Yeah, that's a bullsh[/b]it fantasy. No historian takes that even vaguely seriously. It was created after the fact to justify the use of the weapons. There was never any actual intention of a land war in Jappan. Lemay would have accomplished exactly the same goal with incindiaries. Aruged for it, in fact. Groves was dead set on dropping the nukes, because he wanted prestige for his program.

[b]
We did the right thing, and in no way can you compare that what happened here to 9-11.


shut the fuc[/b]k up. Dropping nuclear weapons on civillians was NOT the "right thing" no matter how much you spin it. The only possible way to see it as anything but dramatically worse than 9-11 in every way shape and form, morrally, ethically, and philospohically is if you take the following view:

Everything the US does is good, anything anyone else does to the US is bad.

If that's your viewpoint stop wasting my fuc[b]king time and go drape some red white and blue ribbons on a highway overpass and tie a yellow ribbon round the old trailer park welcome sign.