Gorgon

The real problem must be the sheer number of lawyers pumped out of the schools every year. They need something to do.

A charity should be judged on eficiency, but there is a tendency to forget that there are costs involved, and that these are comperable to other companies with similar logistic and office operations. Raising money costs money. You think the people who stop you on the street or call you on the phone for a donation work for free ?.

Wait a minuite, you don't prefer mutants over roaches ? The use of the bomb can't be called justifiable when the arguments for it are all based on assumption. You can say definately that it shortened the war, but you can't say with any ammount of finality that a swift surrender could not have been agreed without it, or that the bombs saved as much as a single life. Of course it matters in such a massively destructive war who started it, and of course it matters what their motivations were, but on all sides considerations for civlian deaths were overshadowed my military necessity as a matter of course. At the time of the bombings Japan was contained, unable to respond. Military necessity was nolonger as prominent with the outcome nolonger in doubt, but the Americans nuked Japan, and Bomber Command continued to hit civilian targets even long after any consideration of german production rates was an issue. Politicians should have stepped up and put an end to it, but the politicians themselves had become the generals.

I believe that it's quite unplausible that earth is the only example of the complex chemical reaction called life in so vast a universe. It's not that far a leap even to postulate that it's likely that there are other lifeforms, and even civilisations. I don't think they have anything to do with the phenomenon we call UFOs though.

'For hundreds of years, such and such, blah blah' Well it ain't exactly like that anymore now is it. I can understand the need for a movement when there is real and tangible discrimination, everyone should have equal rigths and all. I may get into trouble for suggesting this, but it's a bit like the NAACP. Once a movement with a very real and justifiable end, now, more or less strugling to find a reasons for its own existance. This whole business with the 'N' word. The blacks are the ones using it, so what is the NAACP now, some kind of institute issuing out rules on language use ?. There are plenty of places in the 'third world' where women have no more rights than they did a couple of hundred years back in the west. Go pick a fight where it's needed.

I prefer to think in the lines of Mad Max, mutants and bunker cities.

Alien pinups don't score that high on my wierdometer. Anyway the links work now, I prefer the black and whites, the lighting is good. The others tend to look too 'photoshoppy'.

Linky no worky

Everyone did. Dresden, NanKing, Stalin's Purges, Auswitch etc.

You can't complain when you aren't present.

uhh, me ?

I wonder how that stacks up per annum versus the general death rate after the invasion. Hard to tell since the US and the Iraqi authority in their wisdom decided not to count. Sadam was in power how many years, 20+ ?

But towards the end ? I mean, bomb what, Berlin, just before it was about to fall, somehow I think not. It's not that that the US was somehow worse that i'm trying to suggest here, simply that the action may/should have been avoided. The argument that they did not surrender in the days after the first bomb does not rule out the concept of surrender without the bombings at all, and again, the hypothetical casualty rates in the event of invasion assumes there would be one. These are all assumptions, and they are convenient to hide behind. Bargaining and some kind of fig leaf for the emperor and his cronies that would enable a surrender was another possible outcome, and as mentioned I am not alone in this assessment, in the words of then General Eisenhower ; "It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." The political message was, as mentioned, quite unmistakable, but to begin in the language of 'world communism' to suggest all kinds of outlandish machinations by Soviet Russia and that the bomb prevented these as well, it's just another example of selective memory, and history writing.

We are discussing the nukes because that was the subject, you are wellcome to start a new thread about Dresden, the einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe, Stalin's massacres, etc. if you want.

It is commonly represented as an 'either-or' scenario, either the bombs were dropped on two population centers or there would have to be a full scale invasion. The fact is, the Japanese posed no significant threat to anyone in their battered state. Their fleets destroyed and all sigificant holdouts in the Pacific taken. Trueman wanted the troops home before christmas, and here was a much appreciated chance to get the war overwith. The commonly accepted idea that that this final, perhaps unnecessary, act of destruction saved milions is equal parts guesswork and wishful thinking. Yes, the invasion would have been extremely costly on both sides, but we are assuming too much here. None of the powers involved in WW2 can be said to be without their own stories of mass killings of civilians, this is all common knowledge, and while the outcome still hung in the balance none would have hesitated to use new super weapons. When the bombs were dropped we were in the closing act, where no question remained who would be the victors. The political message of Hiroshima and Nakasaki was unmistakable though, it brough into existance the worlds first superpower.

Training in flashy sounding acronyms is mandatory in officer school.

" Don't get me wrong, the events of August 1945 are in no way, shape, or form a high point in American history. Unforunately, the decision to use the bomb was one that was hoisted upon the US by the Japanese. Attempts were made to end the war without the kind of wholesale loss of life that was witnessed those two days. As was mentioned before, anyone who thinks that the Japanese were not prepared to fight to the bitter end need only look at the fact that it took TWO bombs and several days for them to finally surrender." The US could have chosen another less densely populated target, but, they wanted effect. They didn't warn them because they wanted to make sure the bombers had a clear path. There were alternatives though that did not necessarily include the invasion of mainland Japan. Two bombs could have been dropped at minor sites. One prominent disident was Eisenhower. Churchil and Trueman had both comitted fully to the motto of 'unconditional surrender', to the point where no other kind of surrender would be considered, even if one had existed that would have shortened the war. This was a time and a war where the lives of civilians meant very little on both sides though, the only thing about this that really irks me is the idea that those bombs saved milions of lives, there is no evidence for it, other than a comparison of casualty rates in the even of an invasion. That is not fact, it's conjecture, and it's a bit too convenient.

Won't be long now before some American comes along and tells us all what an icredible act of mercy the bombings were, and how many million lives they saved.

These things might work against a fortified position, or even ambushing near a roadside, but they are pretty useless in a crowded city. How long do you think it would take before one got stolen and sold for parts.

The US seems to be going through another one of those phases were the word '****' is not allowed to be used in the more colloquial Chris Rock/Richard Pryer sense. I maintain that the word is not always racist, and not in this instance anyway.

Doesen't sound racist, unless the owner of the car is black that is

Never liked his movies that much.

What did you do, gank someone for his gold chains ?

Why would I want to run a mile, whos chasing me ?

Tough crowd