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From: jlh@loral.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.misc,net.rumor
Subject: Re: Lives saved by nuking Japan?!? (was Re: The Presidents...)
Message-ID: <1161@loral.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Jun-86 15:41:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: loral.1161
Posted: Wed Jun  4 15:41:26 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Jun-86 06:19:29 EDT
References: <133@petrus.UUCP> <513@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU> <709@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <2928@jhunix.UUCP>
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Summary: kablooie

In article <735@sigma.UUCP> roman@sigma.UUCP (Bill Roman) writes:
> about the "Myth" of millions of lives saved by the Hiro/Nag A-bombs.
> I recommend an article "A postwar myth: 500,000 U.S. lives saved" in
> the June/July 1986 issue of _Bulletin_of_the_Atomic_Scientists_
> to anyone who believes this.  Briefly summarized, it states that the
> "half a million boys on our side" that Truman is quoted as believing
> he saved with the atomic bombs was an after-the-fact rationalization.
> The military plans for the invasion estimated casualties on our side
> at roughly an order of magnitude less.
> 
> The couple of hundred thousand who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
> were civilians; I don't think the bombings were particularly significant
> militarily.  They served more as a frightful demonstration.  I
> personally find the morality of such action totally abhorrent.
> -- 
> Bill Roman

Considering it was the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor, and they were the
ones out to conquer the world, and at the time they were pretty cruel 
people (remember hari-kari and samari warriors?), I don't give a crap
how many of our boys we saved by nuking them.  Which is more important
to you, 500 would be world conquerers or your only son?  Granted, it's
not nice to drop nuclear bombs on people, but I don't see how it is
any more abhorrent to kill someone with a nuke than it is a knife.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating nuking Russia, Nicaraugua (sp?),
or New Jersy.  I'm saying dead is dead, and war is war, and they are
both pretty abhorrent.  If they come up with something like the nuetron
bomb that kills people by radiation but doesn't leave a radioactive mess
everywhere is that any worse than a machine gun?  Before you bring up
the people who don't get enough radiation to die, but get cancer or something
instead, think of all the soldiers who where shot in the leg, arm, or
spine by a machine gun and didn't die.  So why aren't the peace marchers
chanting 'no more machine guns'?

I heard a rumour that ever since net.flame and net.bizzare died there have
been a lot of bizzare and flaming articles in net.rumour.  Is this true?