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To: Moominoid who wrote (10180)	9/24/2001 5:38:55 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74559

<So dropping atom bombs on Japan was cowardly? > David, if CB's definition is used, even more cowardly than a suicide mission on a kindergarten because the suicide person would have to have the courage of their convictions whereas those who dropped the nukes on Hiroshima kindergartens could fly safely away. Yes, yes, I know, the civilian population of Hiroshima was 'unavoidable collateral damage'. I hope we don't soon have the first nuclear war of the 21st century. The last one was over half a century ago [the USA won it]. I wonder if all nukes are accounted for around the world. I wonder if Osama has used funding from the USA to buy a couple of Pakistani nukes from friendly Islamic buddies who seem happy to give him a lot of support and he has shipped these to the USA perhaps a year ago. Osama does seem excessively confident to me. Almost smug. Which is not the sort of manner I'd expect from somebody scuttling for his life. He seems very happy to be publicized. He is certainly not faceless, senseless or cowardly in any normal use of English. I think his ambition has all along been to take over Saudi Arabia. I don't believe his family has disowned him. I think they are the next Saudi Arabian royal family in waiting. Saudi Arabia will be renamed Ladenland and the oil will flow to the Great Satan and the US$ will fund Islamic overthrow of secular states around the Moslem world. I hope the USA has their bases in Pakistan well-defended. I'm certain that the Islamic Jihadists will see them as having been lured into a trap. Mq PS: My rant against USA funding of terrorists here - many Americans have been funding terrorism for a long time. They have helped build up the culture of terrorism so popular around the world in recent decades. I am hopeful that some of them were in the WTC: Message 16403305

To: Moominoid who wrote (10180)	9/24/2001 10:45:11 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Dropping bombs on cities is always going to kill civilians. When you say "Japan" I assume you mean Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The terrible destruction caused by those bombs has always caused a lot of controversy. One thing to remember is that no one knew, in advance, about radiation poisoning. In fact, a large group of scientists thought that detonating the bombs might cause a chain reaction which could destroy the earth. In other words, the aftereffects could not be predicted. The tests were done in the desert. Many say that the targets had no military value. That's at best an urban legend and at worse an absolute fabrication. Hiroshima was headquarters for the Japanese 2nd Army, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. It also had a heavy concentration of factories manufacturing munitions and other military goods. From the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum website, a source with no reason to be biased in favor of the USA: hiroshima.tomato.nu Here is a map showing the military installations in and around Hiroshima: hiroshima.tomato.nu Why Hiroshima was chosen: >>The size and the shape of the city was suited to the destructive power of the A-bombs. Because Hiroshima had not been bombed, ascertaining the effects of the A-bomb would be relatively easy. Hiroshima had a high concentration of troops, military facilities and military factories that had not yet been subject to significant damage.<< hiroshima.tomato.nu The second bomb, detonated on August 9, 1945, was destined for Kokura Arsenal on the southwest Japanese island of Kyushu. Due to bad weather, the pilot instead bombed Nagasaki, the home of a Mitsubishi torpedo factory. The reasons for chosing the second targets: >>The two target cities had been carefully selected. They had purposely not been bombed heavily by LeMay's B-29s so that, as the after-action report noted, "The assessment of the atomic bomb damage would not be confused by having to eliminate previous incendiary or high explosive damage." Kokura, on the northeast corner of Kyushu, was chosen as the primary target for Fat Man because it was the enemy's principal production source for automatic weapons. It was also the site of the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and was one of the largest shipbuilding and naval centers in Japan. Nagasaki, the secondary target, was the third largest city on Kyushu. It was also one of Japan's leading shipbuilding and repair centers. It was not considered a completely "virgin" target, however, because it had been bombed many weeks before by Twentieth Air Force bombers. Niigata was originally considered as a third target, but it was too far away from the other two cities. << thehistorynet.com