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Oerdin
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of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Kamrat X
Agent Orange was definitely chemical, and it was definitely used as a weapon. It caused widespread disease and birth defects to those that had been exposed to it. American soldiers as well as Vietnamese civilians. Just Google for "Effects of Agent Orange" if you donīt believe me.
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Thanks I am well aware of Agent Orange and we have been discussing it for half a page now. Agent Orange was not intended to be used on people so most people would not consider it a weapon. Instead it is a designed to clear roads sides of bush and trees. It's a sucky choice loss men to enemy ambushes or clear roads of folliage and risk birth defects years later. They made the right choice.
Gulf War Syndrome has been studied for over a decade now and the only conclusions which have been reached are that there are likely multiple unrelated illnesses occuring. The best explination I've seen says that some people were exposed to small doses of chemcial weapons which the Iraqis stored in bunkers and which the Allies destroyed from the air thus releasing the chemicals.
Your version of WW2 is interesting and I'm sure make an example out of the Japanese to teach the Russians a lesson was part of it, however, you have missed the big picture.
The US estimated it would take 1 million killed or wounded soldiers to completely capture Japan's home islands; we can argue if that estimate was correct or not but that's the numbers Truman was looking at when he had to decide to us the bomb or not. Also you may recall that at the Yalta Conference all of the Allies agreed to continue fighting until Germany and Japan both agreed to unconditional surrender and while the Japan did make conditional peace overtures in 1945 they were rejected based upon the Yalta agreement that only unconditional surrender was acceptable.
With an invasion estimated at killing or wound 1 million allied service men and about ten to twenty times as many Japanese then dropping two atom bombs starts to look pretty attractive doesn't it?
Last edited by Oerdin on 28-01-2005 at 18:25
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
Gepap thatis a silly definition. I'm sure every military in the world uses chemicals to dye the fabric of their clothes or something similiarly mundane so by your definition they are all using chemical weapons to help one side on the battle field. Let's be realistic and use the tradition definition of chemical weapons which everyone already recognizes. |
People dye their uniforms on the battlefield- maybe you guys have a bit too much time.
Defoliating mass strenches of jungle (essentially devastating the local environment) is not a mundane use. Last time I looked in fact this mass use of defoliants was the ONLY time such widespread use of chemical defoliants occured in order to fight a war (the only other mass use is the spraying of drug area), and I doubt it will ever be tried again.
Oh, and as for the definition "everyone recognizes", here is a nice, simple everyday definiton from a common source, like say, http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/c1/chem-war.asp
NOte the inclusion of Agent Orange. Infoplease has the same article.
Here is another:
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/...n/m0011145.html
another:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanave...ns/history.html
another:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/VNchemical.htm
and yet another:
http://www.rainbowpediatrics.net/faq/24.14.html
I could keep going, but at least a simple google search seems to indicate that Agent Orange most certainly fits the "everyday definition" of chemical warfare.
Last edited by GePap on 28-01-2005 at 20:18
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Dr Zoidberg
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Communist Party of Apolyton
Jan 2002
time: 06:29
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Oerdin, even if Agent Orange isnīt a weapon as such it sure was used as one. The massive defoliant campaigns was used to root out vietnamese troops or to prevent ambushes and stuff. It sure sounds like a weapon to me...
And the part about 1 million dead in an invasion attempt od Japan is load of bull****. It was just an excuse to drop the bombs. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:
quote:
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Surveys opinion that certainly prior to December 31 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. |
And why drop two bombs? Surely one would be enough? It was just pure chance that the bomb dropped over Hiroshima was a uranium bomb and the one dropped over Nagasaki was a plutonium one, was it?
And further more had the Soviets said that they would declare war on the Japanese 90 days after the end of the european war. As this was May 8 that would make it Aug 8. This is why the US had to have the unconditinal surrender of Japan before Aug 8. Otherwise they maybe had to share Japan with the Soviets, and thatīs not what they wanted.
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Dr Zoidberg
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Communist Party of Apolyton
Jan 2002
time: 06:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
Not at all that was the best intelligence the war time leaders had to make their decisions. You, expost facto, come up with detailed interviews which took place after the war ended which use information none of the allied heads of state could possibly have known when they were making military decisions. Sounds like self serving revisionist nonsense to me; the first thing a good historian learns to to judge people in their historical context known what they know and more critically what they do not know. Your attempts to explain away things in a unhistoircal sense 60 years later smacks of personal bias more then anything. |
But the information regarding the situation in Japan was available to Truman and the military. The japanese code had been broken a while back and the messages were being intercepted, so Washington very well knew which state the Japanese war machine was in. A complete shambles. As Howard Zinn writes in his book:
quote:
It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered.
On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to and did relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to conclusion.
If only Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war.
Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. |
The american lives mentioned of is the supposed (but not proven IIRC) american POW-camp located 1 mile north of Nagasaki.
quote:
Clearly it was not. After he first bomb was dropped the Japanese were ordered to surrender unconditionally and given several days to evaluate the damage and to consider allied demands. The Japanese government rejected unconditional surrender and instead insisted on terms which the US could not accept due to the Yalta Agreement. Only after the Japanese government refused to unconditional surrender was the second bomb dropped and that is when the Japanese government finally agreed to unconditional surrender. |
Excuse me?  AFAIK, the Nagasaki bomb was dropped on Aug 7, one day after the Hiroshima bomb.
quote:
I'm sure a desire to end it without further involving the Soviets was a desire though you are looking at things through eye which know the cold war is coming. Churchhill repeatedly was quoted as saying Truman was niave when it came to the good intentions of the Soviet government and the truth is the US government and people continued to look at the Soviets as allies and not rivials until after the war. True, certain military or political leaders started making the shift earlier but the fact remains the biggest factor weighting in Truman's mind was the idea of 1 million allied causualties. Truman repeatedly said that his job was to spare allied lives and make the enemy die instead thus when he was handed a way to force the enemy to surrender without risking millions of lives in an invasion he jumped at the chance. |
Even if the cold war was some time away, there was the usual competition about the spoils of war, and how the loot would be divided. The US was not prepared to share Japan as they had been forced to share Germany according to the Yalta agreement. Remember that the Soviet-Union demanded half of Germany while Britain, France and the US had to split the other half. Stalin didnīt even want ot give a part of Germany to the french at first, but then relented with the demand that the french part had to come from the anglo/american part.
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28-01-2005 09:53
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