http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/...st/5219830.stm

Looking at the spectrum of quotes from locals and politicians of all hue - it would appear Scotland is not too keen on being used as a fuelling stop for the weapons on their way to the Middle-East


C'mon Scotland who's side are you on away?

LOL

In Athens there were a few protests too. In fact, they tore down a statute of Harry S. Truman.

The terrorists LOVE it!

__________________
"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

poor Harry!!!

what does the S stand for?

Quite funny JP5. Truman was the biggest terrorist to have ever lived. He really had WMDs...and he used them. Twice. And if you want someone to thank for all the North Korean crap we still have going on today, go ahead and thank him. SOAB almost got my grandfather killed.

wikipedia gives a good concise argument. A supporter of Truman may argue one or two of these points, but when you take all of them into account, it is obvious that the bombings were done out of spite, and were war crimes....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_...a_and_Nagasaki

"The Manhattan Project had originally been conceived as a counter to Nazi Germany's atomic bomb program, and with the defeat of Germany, several scientists working on the project felt that the United States should not be the first to use such weapons. Two of the prominent critics of the bombings were Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, who had together spurred the first bomb research in 1939 with a jointly written letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Szilard, who had gone on afterwards to play a major role in the Manhattan Project, argued: "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them." In the days just before their use, many scientists (including American nuclear physicist Edward Teller) argued that the destructive power of the bomb could have been demonstrated without the taking of lives.

The existence of historical accounts which indicate that the decision to use the atomic bombs was made in order to provoke an early surrender of Japan by use of an awe-inspiring power, coupled with the observation that the bombs were purposefully used upon targets which included civilians, has caused some commentators to state that the incident was an act of state terrorism. Historian Robert Newman, who is in favor of the decision to drop the bombs, took the claim of state terrorism seriously enough to argue that the practice of terrorism is justified in some cases.[37]

Some have claimed that the Japanese were already essentially defeated, and therefore use of the bombs was unnecessary. General Dwight D. Eisenhower so advised the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, in July of 1945.[38] The highest-ranking officer in the Pacific Theater, General Douglas MacArthur, was not consulted beforehand but said afterward that he felt that there was no military justification for the bombings. The same opinion was expressed by Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), and Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials);[38] Major General Curtis LeMay;[39] and Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard,[40] and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.[41]

Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:
"In 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. 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."[42]
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, reported:

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's 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."[43]
The survey assumed that continued conventional attacks on Japan—with additional direct and indirect casualties—would be needed to force surrender by the November or December dates mentioned.

In 1963 the bombings were subjected to judicial review in Shimoda et al. v. The State[44]. On the 22nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found that "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war."[45] In the opinion of the court, the act of dropping an atomic bomb on cities was at the time governed by international law found in the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907 and the Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923.[46] and was therefore illegal.[47]

Others contend that Japan had been trying to surrender for at least two months but the U.S. refused by insisting on an unconditional surrender. In fact, while several diplomats favored surrender, the leaders of the Japanese military were committed to fighting a "decisive battle" on Kyushu, hoping that they could negotiate better terms for an armistice afterward—all of which the Americans knew from reading decrypted Japanese communications. The Japanese government did not decide what terms, beyond preservation of an imperial system, they would have accepted to end the war; as late as August 9, the Supreme Council was still split, with the hardliners insisting Japan should demobilize its own forces, no war crimes trials, and no occupation. Only the direct intervention of the emperor ended the dispute, and even after that a military coup was attempted to prevent the surrender.

There is also some question as to how much Truman knew about the initial bombing. In his diary, he states that he told Secretary of War Stimson "to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target, not men, women, and children", and that they were in accord that "the target will be a purely military one".[48] Immediately after the bombing, Truman gave a speech stating, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians," seemingly not realizing that Hiroshima was a major city.[49][50]

Another criticism is that the U.S. should have waited a short time to gauge the effect of the Soviet Union's entry into the war. The U.S. knew, as Japan did not, that the Soviet Union had agreed to declare war on Japan three months after V-E Day; such an attack was indeed launched on August 8, 1945. The loss of any possibility that the Soviet Union would serve as a neutral mediator for a negotiated peace, coupled with the entry into combat of the Red Army (the largest active army in the world), might have been enough to convince the Japanese military of the need to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (plus some provision for the emperor). Because no U.S. invasion was imminent, it is argued that the U.S. had nothing to lose by waiting several days to see whether the war could be ended without use of the atom bomb. As it happened, Japan's decision to surrender was made before the scale of the Soviet attack on Manchuria, Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands was known, but had the war continued, the Soviets had plans to invade Hokkaido well before the Allied invasion of Kyushu.[51] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's research has led him to conclude that the atomic bombings themselves were not the principal reason for capitulation. Instead, he contends, it was the swift and devastating Soviet victories on the mainland in the week following Stalin's August 8 declaration of war that forced the Japanese message of surrender on August 15, 1945.[52]

A number of organizations have criticized the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on moral grounds. To give one example, a 1946 report by the Federal Council of Churches entitled Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith, includes the following passage:

"As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one's judgement of the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible."

Im going to shave the hair off my ears.

that the bomb was dropped on Japan. The atrocities that were committed by the Japanese military with the acquiescence of the populace precludes me having sympathy for them. However, it angers me when I hear that it was necessary to end the war. That's bull and just plain ignorant. Truman was a little man who wasn't up to the events of his day. I think he wanted to drop it because when he told Stalin about it, Stalin wasn't impressed.

What's more telling is that they continued building bombs after the war. They never stopped when the war was over. From the first bomb they just kept making them. It was like a perpetual bomb making machine. Once it started there was no stopping it.

__________________
the memories of a man in his old age
are the deeds of a man in his prime

roger waters

and the american people have not stood by and watched atrocity after atrocity committed by the u.s. government? with that logic, september 11th would gain no sympathy from anyone...but i guess this is the u.s. double standard.

and to any self righteous american on here that thinks the u.s. is immune to true full blown imperialism--all you have to do is look at vietnam. a country that was denied the right to democracy because they were "communists." and it isn't as if this was a very long time ago. hell, the u.s. supports proxy dictatorships to this day...in a court of law, if you have an agent act on your behalf, you are the one that is guilty as well. if I contract someone to kill someone else, I'm a murderer. Plain and simple.

Personally, I don't think civilians are ever to blame and I always have sympathy on them, but then again, I have sympathy for all people that are killed because they are too stupid to think for themselves, and that includes the military members of our own country and the terrorists for that matter. it's just a cycle of ignorance and idiocity.

Everyone knows the history of the bomb(s), it's long since been declassified. The only other option (other than dropping the nukes), was a protracted land and sea invasion that would have cost at least a million lives. Politicians have to make tough decisions, that's why we pay them the big bucks.

(And it's also why I grimace at the ignorance of moral absolutism).

I don't go for that line that the bomb was dropped to save 100,000s of US soldiers lives. Although it clearly did!

I believe that "thinking" behind the dropping of the 2 bombs on Japan was to send a message to Stalin and his Armies currently sweepng out Manchuria.