My friends, the ONLY nation to ever have used nuclear weapons on

[cantstandbush]

human beings is the United States. Do not lose sight of this fact. Understand what prompts others to seek similar weapons of mass destruction. What nations currently occupy another's country or land? Unless i am mistaken, only two now that Syria is out of Lebanon. Look, see, learn, think, understand.

[TNMOM]

1. I agree. We need to set a better example.

Nuclear disarmament starts at home.

[Mountainman]

2. If you check your history, nuclear disarmament was started by the

Eisenhower administration. Even before that, during the Trumann administration we tried stop the build up of nuclear weapons using the United Nations as a forum. We have put forward the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and others. It was the hawks in the Reagan administration who now are part of the Bush Administration who want a nuclear build up in this country.

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. I'm afraid the nuclear build-up was going on long before Reagan

Although the Reagan administration was certainly particularly fanatical about it. NSC-68 published in 1950 pretty much sealed the fate for future administrations. Even before 1950 we had the likes of Gen. Curtis Lemay who were already pushing for an absolute preemptive strike against the Soviet Union. That group kept pushing that agenda until the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Until Robert McNamara became Secretary of Defense all contingency plans were based on total and instantaneous annihilation of more than 1000 targeted cites throughout the Soviet Union, China and all Communist countries. Even Gen. Douglas MacArthur's recommendation for use of nuclear weapons in the Korean War involved massive strikes throughout China and the Soviet Union

A recent work of history on the subject is James Carroll's, House of War. This book takes a very scholarly approach to tracing the steady nuclear build-up from the earliest days of the Manhattan project up to the present.




link on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618187804/qid=1152457061/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-1846545-3744063?s=books&v=glance&n=283155


.

[Poppyseedman]

4. Truman should have never dropped the bomb(s)

Japan was already on their knees.

[INdemo]

5. Yes but it would have required more fighting

to get them to finally surrender. Attacking Japan on a full scale invasion was the alternative which would have resulted in thousands of more lives lost...And that was the main reason for using the bomb.

[AnOhioan]

7. The main reason was sending a msg to the USSR n/t

[Placebo]

6. We did not launch an unprovoked nuclear attack.

We were in a world war. Thousands of people were dying every single day. Technology provided a destructive force of unimaginable power. The United States did what was necessary to bring the carnage that had gripped the globe for years to a swift and speedy end.

If the United States had not developed nuclear weapons first, imagine the consequences. It was only a matter of time before one of our enemies obtained them.

How you or anyone else would try and justify that the US should have continued to wage a conventional war against an enemy that showed no signs of giving up, which would of more than likely resulted in levels of casualties stretching far beyond the death totals resulting from the two atom bombs dropped on Japan, just doesn't make any sense to me and most of America.

There were no good choices, only bad ones. But we made the right choice.

[cantstandbush]

8. Do you think if any in the ME or N.Korea launch nuke is will be unprovoked

I guess one man's provocation is another man's hot air?

[cantstandbush]

9. The fact remains, adjectives aside. the US is the only nation to have

done this purposely on CIVILIAN populations. When it happened, the war was essentially over and it was unnecessary save for testing the weapons.

[pscot]

18. The war was not

"essentially over". Okinawa cost 30,000 American casualties and perhaps 150,000 Japanese casualties. Fire-bombing raids as devastating as the ones that destroyed Dresden had failed to move the Japanese high command. The Japanese generals were talking seriously about a "defense to the death" of the home islands; a glorious act of national self-immolation. Women and children were being armed and trained. One young woman was reportedly given an ice-pick and told that her mission was to plant it in an American's belly. TRuman ordered the use of the first bomb, but the Nagasaki bomb was used by the military without his direct knowledge. They had two bombs so they used them. Truman immediately ordered that no more atomic bombs were to be used without his express consent. Also, the purpose was not to destroy civilians. Japanese war production was located in the midst of populous areas. The workers lived around the plants. Collateral damage on a vast scale was inevitable.

[cantstandbush]

10. Do you think Saddam was "unprovoked" when he used bio-weapons against

Iran and the Kurds trying to overthrow his government? Do you think Saddam was "unprovoked" when he invaded Kuwait to stop their slant-drilling? Now if you want to talk about being "unproveoked"talk about the US invasion of Iraq. Iraq had not even threatened the US.

[Placebo]

13. Are you okay?

How did the invasion of Iraq get into this? Your response(s) to my post just bring up unrelated topics that I never mentioned.

[INdemo]

17. The thought just occurred to me that had the atomic

bomb not been used and we launched a full scale invasion of Japan ....many of us Baby boomers wouldn't be sitting here talking about it.....

[sleipnir]

11. We struck a genocidal, aggressive empire to stop them. That's justified.

Japan killed millions of innocent people in China and other parts of Asia. Their government chose those steps and authorized the murder of millions of innocent people through their armed forces.

I do not, however, take pride or lightly accept the use of them against Japan. Considering the circumstances, it was a solution and one that perhaps saved millions of lives.

There are NO countries right now that fit the bill that Japan lived up to back then. Even the current US action in Iraq pales in comparison to the atrocities that the Japanese Empire impaled on their enemies.

Perhaps the Karma of killing of 20-30 million Chinese finally caught up to the Japanese Empire during two days in August.

[cantstandbush]

12. Not justified. We didn't have to do it to end the war and that is the onl

reason given for doing so.

[Placebo]

14. Precisely.

It was the best of many bad choices.

[SaveElmer]

15. Apples and Oranges...

Situations not even close to being analogous...

[Behind the Aegis]

16. You're mistaken.

There are other countries, not territories, occupied by other nations. At least you are posting your anti-Israel screeds more cleverly.