This point really cannot be overstated.
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In light of Trumpâs desire to take us to nuclear war, do you know how fucking stupid you sound harping on Hillaryâs:
- Emails
- Speechs
- Iraq War vote
- Fracking policy
- Trade policy
- Anything. Literally nothing Clinton has done or will ever do comes even close to threatening the very existence of the planet, and even trying to equate the two makes you an epic horseâs ass and a moron who should be locked away in a padded room for the safety of others.
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Trump should not be polling more than 15%-20% at this point. The hatreds and venom motivating 40%-45% of the electorate that still favour him are things which will haunt me for the remainder of my days, whether Hill gets elected or not.
And I am extremely gratified that my father did not live to see Trumpâs America.
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Pretty rich for a nation that needlessly vaporized Nagasaki and Hiroshima to piss down their legs over the nuclear genie escaping the bottle again.
Oh, come on, this is nothing new. People in this country used to have fucking picnics, where theyâd bring their children and have family outing to watch black people be lynched. These people voting for Trump are simply the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of those people. But this is absolutely nothing new. The good old days never existed. Thereâs always been a certain level of extreme evil that exists and operates in this country that was never that far below the surface.
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I think the people wearing these hats have those days in mind.
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Sometimes is surfaces, comes out in the open. Like when Adam Sandler formed his own production company.
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Exactly. To them, those most certainly were the good ole days.
LLOL Thatâs hilarious, but Happy Gilmore was pretty funny. Iâm not sure Iâve seen one of his movies since then.
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This one sums it all up:
14 But imagine having to turn launch keys not knowing if we were under attack or if it was b/c foreign leader said a mean thing on twitter
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Needlessly? The vaporization of two cities compelled the emperor to have his people accept the coming invasion and not fight back - which they were prepared to do. So vehement were some in the Japanese military that Japan not surrender that his broadcast about his intentions to surrender nearly didnât happen due to an attempted coup (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KyĆ«jĆ_incident). It is very likely that a million lives were saved on both sides. Additionally, the world had an object lesson on the horror of nuclear weapons and why they shouldnât be used again. Pretty tough to sit in judgement about ending a world war seventy years out. It was a tough decision.
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Top Trump aide Paul Manafort later denied that any such security briefings have been made, saying that it âjust didnât happen.â
Just like Melanoma Trump just didm;t plagerise passages form Michelle Obamaâs 2008 speech?
Mr. Manafort, you have ZERO credibility in anything you say about anything.
It might be time to head back to your Ukraine bosses.
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This, a thousand times this. But the âserious peopleâ in the media will keep flogging that false-equivalence.
âYes, Wolf, mr trump seems to be unmoved by the idea of the fiery doom of millions. But, as one poll proves, they Just Donât seem to trust Hilllary!â
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Please. No amount of disgust on your part excuses not pissing down legs. Just thought Iâd mention that before the onslaught.
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Does this scene come to anyoneâs mind?
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I think the fact that we canât depend on the truth of anything anybody around Trump says is becoming a very serious issue. With normal politicians there is always somebody who will at least leak the truth, but not Trumpâs gang.
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I knew one of the first Americans into Nagasaki. He was a scientist who studied the effects of the bomb on the citizens of Japan. Maybe if you talked to him you would piss down your leg over the nuclear genie escaping from the bottle again too.
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Well, to be fair, I think Trump meant just one or two small warheads, on smallish cities, just to let everyone know he means business. âWarning Nukes,â I think they are called.
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Brilliant, Steve. Well said.
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Oh yea, standard naval practice - fire a warning Nuke across the bow.
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Oh please, it was known to be a bullshit move AT THE TIME WE DID IT.
The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Surveyâs opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
General (and later president) Dwight Eisenhower â then Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, and the officer who created most of Americaâs WWII military plans for Europe and Japan â said:
"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasnât necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
Newsweek, 11/11/63, Ike on Ike
Eisenhower also noted (pg. 380):
In [July] 1945⊠Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. âŠthe Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of âfaceâ. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitudeâŠ
Admiral William Leahy â the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II â wrote (pg. 441):
It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
General Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg. 65, 70-71):
MacArthurâs views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed âŠ. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.
Moreover (pg. 512):
The Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face âprompt and utter destruction.â MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the Generalâs advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary.
Similarly, Assistant Secretary of War John McLoy noted (pg. 500):
I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs.
General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force âhawk,â stated publicly shortly before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan:
The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.
The Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bombing Survey Paul Nitze wrote (pg. 36-37, 44-45):
[I] concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945.
***
***Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary.***
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharias wrote:
Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.
Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.
I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.
The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that âThe Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russiaâs entry into the war.â In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated âThe Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.â It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhowerâs assessment was âIt wasnât necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.â Eisenhower also stated that it wasnât necessary for Truman to âsuccumbâ to [the tiny handful of people putting pressure on the president to drop atom bombs on Japan.]
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