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It comes at about the 5:50 mark. Cliff May asks Stewart whether Truman's use of the atomic bomb was a war crime, Stewart ruminates and then responds with an unequivocal "yes." He's certainly not the only American who would take that view, but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse. Stewart repeats the charge...

TOKYO—A 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II, officials said Tuesday. Tsutomu Yamaguchi had already been a certified "hibakusha," or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki, but has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier as well, city officials said. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent...

Remember where you where the day the world slipped toward TEOTWAWKI. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f367aada-fec8-11dd-b19a-000077b07658.html

In 1945, after the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities, J. Robert Oppenheimer expressed foreboding about the spread of nuclear arms. “They are not too hard to make,” he told his colleagues on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M. “They will be universal if people wish to make them universal.” That sensibility, born where the atomic bomb itself was born, grew into a theory of technological inevitability. Because the laws of physics are universal, the theory went, it was just a matter of time before other bright minds and determined states joined the club. A corollary was that trying...

On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called "Bock's Car," after its...

Annual event near Y-12 features protest, praise of nukes - OAK RIDGE - At the minute Wednesday that an atomic bomb was dropped 63 years ago, Ralph Hutchison suddenly stopped reading somber reflections on that historic instant when the world forever changed.During the moment of silence that followed, a woman in favor of nuclear weapons could be heard in the background, defiantly singing "Onward Christian Soldiers." Such is the study in contrasts typical for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance's annual commemoration of Hiroshima Day.In front of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, alliance members protested the production of nuclear weapons,...

Hiroshima Day remembrance. In California, Moonbats will be ragging on America again for defeating Japanese fascism. Corner of Seal Beach Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. Sunday, August 3, 2008. Counters are needed. From 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

TOKYO — North Korea took a step on Thursday toward reintegration into the world community and rapprochement with the United States by submitting for outside inspection a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear program. The 60-page declaration from North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished nations, was expected to describe in previously undisclosed detail its capabilities in nuclear power and nuclear weapons — meeting a major demand of the United States and other countries that consider the North a dangerous source of instability. “This can be a moment of opportunity for North Korea,” said President Bush, announcing the...

Retired Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets, Jr., who piloted the aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb used in war, died last week at the age of 92. The life story of Tibbets, Jr. ends with a bit of what I consider a tragedy that should never again befall an American hero. When somebody says "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" these days, they could be referring to Michael Moore and Dennis Kucinich, but 60 years ago, devices sporting those seemingly innocuous monikers caused historically unmatched destruction, and ended a long war. There are many who believe this makes the...

When I was a child, my mother had one of the early coffee table books on display in the living room. “The Family of Man” (http://www.amazon.com/Family-Man-Greatest-Photographic-Exhibition/dp/B000J1AMR6/ref=sr_1_1/103-5108515-2439061?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193940207&sr=1-1) was, to a kid in grade school in the mid-50s, a fascinating book. There was little TV in those days, few magazines for kids, and of course, no video games, computers, or cell phones. This book’s 500 or so black and white pictures, taken from many magazines, showed a vast array of people from many nations engaged in a wide variety of activities. I spent hours and hours staring at the pictures, fascinated. I...

Paul Tibbets Jr., who flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb — on Hiroshima, Japan — died this morning at his East Side home. He was 92. Tibbets had suffered small strokes and heart failure in his final years and had been in hospice care. He was born in Quincy, Ill., but grew up in Miami after his father moved the family there. See link for complete story. Tibbets fell in love with flight and, at age 12, volunteered as a backseat assistant to a biplane pilot, dropping leaflets for the Curtiss Candy Co. at fairs, carnivals and...

There were fins all around, the killer sharks just circling, waiting, assessing their prey in their usual silent, sinister way. For the men strung out in the oil-streaked water, clinging to the sides of flimsy rafts or floating in sodden life-jackets, the sight was terrifying and the underwater brush of leathery skin against a submerged leg, or the nudge of a snout, was gut-wrenching. These men were already survivors, the remaining 900 sailors of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Just three-quarters of the crew had managed to get off the heavy cruiser when she was blown apart by torpedoes from a Japanese...

1945 : United States conducts first test of the atomic bomb The United States conducts the first test of the atomic bomb at its research facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The terrifying new weapon would quickly become a focal point in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The official U.S. development of the atomic bomb began with the establishment of the Manhattan Project in August 1942. The project brought together scientists from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada to study the feasibility of building an atomic bomb capable of unimaginable destructive power. The...

TOKYO — Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday. "I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped," Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo. Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb survivors. "The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved many American lives," said Nobuo Miyake, 78, director-general of a group of...

June 19, 1953 : Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a...

Iran four years from atomic bomb, say experts By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent Last Updated: 3:35am BST 24/04/2007 Iran's nuclear programme is facing such severe technical difficulties that it could take four years to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb and eight years to deploy an operational nuclear weapon, experts say. Students hold placards supporting Iran's nuclear right President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement on April 9 that uranium enrichment on an "industrial scale" had begun was "misleading" and the time-scale for success is likely to be longer than early estimates suggested. "It's very difficult to enrich uranium," said Norman Dombey,...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

There's a certain irony, and even dark humor, in the current hysteria in Washington over the possibility that in the near future, relatively weak and distant Iran might have the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons. After all, Iran is a country that has hardly had imperial ambitions since the days of ancient Persia. Furthermore, to Iran's east, the unstable and second largest Muslim country in the world, Pakistan, already has nuclear weapons in great supply, as does that bellicose and expansionist little ethnic-supremacist European transplant two country's to the west, Israel. In the existing situation in the region, the prospective...

<p>The New York Times article to be published on November 3rd 2006 is about the US putting some captured Iraqi documents on the Foreign Military Intelligence Office (FMSO) website that talks about what the NYT and the IAEA call sensitive information from Iraq 1996 "Full, Final, and Complete Declaration FFCD presented to the UN and IAEA in 1996 and that talks about Iraq nuclear clandestine program. The IAEA and the New York Times claim that Iran may be using some of the technology in this FFCD which is a laughable idea as shown below.</p>

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2006 -- New U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to its claim of a recent nuclear weapons test “says that we are united in our determination to see to it that the Korean peninsula is nuclear weapons free,” President Bush said at the White House after the sanctions were announced yesterday. Earlier, the Security Council had voted unanimously to impose several sanctions on North Korea, calling its claimed nuclear test “a clear threat to international peace and security.” North Korea announced it had successfully exploded a nuclear weapon during an Oct. 9 test. Nuclear...