What is left in Iraq bears no relationship to how Japan was.
In Iraq a greater number of larger bombs were dropped with much greater accuracy on a country that apparently had less targets. If there were targets left in Iraq (and there was) it seems logical that there where targets left in Japan.
The assumption and insinuation was: "without continued "HEAVY" bombing,
OK I used the word heavy in some cases and didn't in others. In any case heavy bombing was ongoing up until the surrender. There is no logical reason for the report to have operated on the assumptiont that somehow this would stop in the Summer of 45. You can of course independently make the case that you think Japan would have given up without continued heavy bombing but I don't think it makes sense to use the bombing report as a source for this argument as it does not say this.
They COULD have killed every man, woman, and child. Naturally this reduces your sincere "comparison" to meaninglessness, which is why I have objected.
Not likely, infact it would have been almost impossible even if we kept up the heavy bombing and use nukes as quickly as we could build them, unless you think the war would have gone in to the 50s. However if the bombing continued for a few months there would have been a significant possibility of more deaths then the atom bombs caused.
As the deaths COULD have been any number up to the census; so your ratio COULD be right. I just find it contrived, self swerving, meaningless and misleading:
Any specific number is rather contrived but there is a strong chance that the number of deaths would have exceded the number killed by the bombs.
Tim, you cannot judge and punish a man for what you think he "might" do: only for what he has done.
I wasn't thinking of it as much as a punishment, as a defense. I agree with you about not punishing people for something they have not done.
If he has done something (criminal), then your cause with him is not one of self defence, but one of justice.
If he is going to kill many people then is it not a matter of defense.
If several trillion (or perhaps an infinite number of trillion) swashbucklers like yourself, take up scurrying around trying to trim the bonsai tree of time, things can get rather confused in one hell of a hurry.
Probably the best reason to hope that time travel doesn't exist. I think the best reason to think it does not and will not exist (the tenses get confused with time travel in a sense if it will exist it already does atleast if anyone has traveled back to our time or earlier) is that there is no evidence of all these travelers mucking around history. If there were very few and they where very skilled maybe they could leave no evidence behind but if there was very few in say 1000 years, then if civilization was still around in a million years you would think that the technology could have advanced to the point where there would be very many.
Tim |
