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User	Jason The Basta | 2006-11-20 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Of corse not! You pick on the weak who can’t defend themselves, not somebody with nuclear weapons! That would just be silly. It’s a moot point anyhow. A nuclear bomb is absurdly easy to make, the only problem is fuel and technology is progressing fast enough that soon IT will be easy to obtain. Once Fusion power is developed you won’t even need special fuel for a nuke. Besides, I was stationed in Korea and I can assure you South Korea would kick the crap out of the north if it ever came to it. Not that they would need to, just wait a week and they’ll all starve to death.

User	Blue Monk | 2006-11-14 |
Subject	untitled
Message	The weapons of the future are the economic ones. As we’ve found out, oil is a big hammer and we are getting squashed because we use so much more than we can produce. You will see a LOT of talk about development of alternatives in the near future. On the other hand, the U.S. has investment dollars for foreign development and food to offer the world, assuming some certain leaders care if their people eat. Pray that we learn to trade goods and services instead of threats.

User	Chell | 2006-11-10 |
Subject	untitled
Message	**I’m a little tired of our role as Global Playground Monitor. ** I agree with this statement too, but, we better get used to our new role in the world. Bush, in his state of the union address said, " "States like these, and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." Winning the "War on Terror" means going after and subduing the "Axis of Evil" - namely: Cuba, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and their supporters- China and Russia. The only way we’ll have enough man-power to suceed in this kind of war on terror is to re-institute the draft and force all of our 18- 35 year olds into battle to eliminate the terrorists threats, and the governments that allow them to thrive, from these countries. And even if we wanted to do that, we are so far in the red that we may not be able to fund that kind of global battle, as well as being fairly sure we don’t have enough equipment for that kind of war. But that’s the goal, and I’m sure if we can’t find a nice way to do it militarily, we can use the war as a way to get rid of the hundreds of nukes we have stockpiled.

User	mae | 2006-11-10 |
Subject	untitled
Message	It IS sad that Kim feels so threatened by America that he feels the need to starve his people in an attempt to ensure North Korea’s independence thought the pursuit of nuclear weapons. This is romanticizing the North Korean leader’s brutality. His starving his people to create nuclear weapons has nothing to do with fear of us. He is not afraid of us. He is a bully, as most of the tyrants who take out their agressions on their own people are, seeking to take on the biggest kid on the block merely so he can be top dog - and kill many more people. It takes too long to develop a weapons-grade nuclear program for it to have anything to do with our being in Iraq. It’s just the biggest gun he can get to strap on and prove he’s a man. That being said, I agree with this statement. I’m a little tired of our role as Global Playground Monitor. mae

User	Blue Monk | 2006-11-09 |
Subject	untitled
Message	The cost in lives and money for the Iraq thing were vastly underestimated because they didn’t listen to Colin Powell when they had the chance. I don’t think they will make that mistake again.

User	| 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	I’m very conflicted with this. One one hand, I agree that the atrocities in N. Korea need to be stopped. But at the same time, I’m a little tired of our role as Global Playground Monitor. I can understand why smaller countries feel they need nuclear arms to defend themselves from us as they’ve seen the Iraq invasion. Yet, I also see where Kim Jong Il is a freaky little bugger using that country as his own personal ant farm. I don’t know, this might be one of those situations where there is no clear answer or resolution. *onetruesmartass*

User	Blue Monk | 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	We have would-be Hitlers budding in N. Korea and Iran. Who ya gonna call?

User	Chell | 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	It IS sad that Kim feels so threatened by America that he feels the need to starve his people in an attempt to ensure North Korea’s independence thought the pursuit of nuclear weapons. America has consistantly shown that she WILL NOT invade a nuclear country. The smaller, non-democratic countries have noticed this trend and have reacted accordingly. One could argue that it makes sense to be as armed as your enemy. Otherwise fighting back ends up being nothing more than a suicide mission. And not fighting back means your country dissolves. (look at Iraq...) And when you’re a small country like North Korea, any perceived weakness could invite an attack from other, larger countries... I’m also noticing that it seems to be a bad practice to have fathers and then sons as rulers- regardless of where you live.

User	Blue Monk | 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	BTY - There’s no telling where KIM Jong Il and his dad figure in the numbers of his people at least starved if not killed. Fits the mold of the earlier mentioned group.

User	Blue Monk | 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	The numbers of people that they - Hitler, Tojo, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idie Amin, Saddam Hussein, etc., etc. killed, starved and/or put into slavery go into MANY MILLIONS, often of their own people. This was without using nukes. In each case, they have proven to be aggressive, apparently heartless tyrants and in some cases their heirs and apparent admirers are still bent that way. They enjoy killing and enslaving "inferior" people. There used to be some fear of U.S. intervention since no other country takes any lead to stop such tyrants, but this may soon evaporate as the will of America is perceived to be weakening in that respect as a result of recent elections. Perceived weakness invites attacks. That is why we would hope to limit proliferation of more nukes, there is nothing to stop a situation from eventually developing where anyone, anywhere could be nuked and no one would ever really know who was responsible or what was the source of the attack. The old MAD - mutually assured distruction control factor would be useless at that point except to threaten to blast anyone "in kind" who was suspect or thought to be so careless as to "lose control" of such a weapon. So instead of reacting against such an attacker that we can’t find, say for instance OBL, we’re forced to act against the supplier(s) or maybe all possible suppliers if the case warrants such drastic action in order to survive. They are, after all, the stated allies of our enemies. Have you heard the phrase "Death to Amerika!" from any place in particular lately? It is this type of madness we should hope to stop before it gets out of hand, but apparently these peanut countries who would have been left alone in the event of such a war now want a piece of MAD too. Is New Zealand the last bastion of sanity?

User	joeyalphabet | 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	There’s some merit to the argument that we wanted to intimidate the Russians by using the bomb, but from what I’ve seen and read the Japanese government was still ruled by hardliners (especially the emperor) and those wanting to surrender lacked the political power to overcome the hawks. In fact the War Department’s casualty estimates were that an invasion of Japan WOULD be a bloodbath on both sides and we had just come through the battle for Okinawa, which was a new horrific level of fighting. The public was getting weary of the war and we needed to end it.

User	Chell | 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Albert Einstein once said: “You realize, once the military have this (the nuclear bomb), they will use it, no matter what you (President Roosevelt) say.” The use of the atomic bomb was not necessary to obtain a Japanese surrender. Documents show that the majority of the Japanese leadership, led by the Emperor, was ready to surrender within a matter of weeks at most, impeded only by a small clique of extremists within the military, and that American intelligence knew this. Keep in mind that an impeding war with Stalin was being expected from the political right. American generals like George Patton openly advocated a preemptive atomic strike against the Soviets both in public and privately to Truman. It can’t be coincidence that the first atomic test took place before the President’s scheduled meeting with Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam. The first atomic bomb was exploded a week before the meeting, and Soviet intelligence reported this to Stalin only days before Potsdam. And in reaction, Stalin ramped up his nuclear bomb project to duplicate the American nuclear breakthrough. Hence the beginning of the nuclear arms race that we’re still running. And why destroy both Hiroshima and Nagasaki? If the object were solely Japanese surrender, then one bomb – or, as some scientists proposed, even a demonstration test before captured Japanese generals – would have been enough. The only possible reason for this double destruction was to ensure that both the uranium - based bomb and the plutonium – based design would function under combat conditions, and that the Soviets would recognize America’s superiority, and also the will of the Americans to use them in combat. **How many millions were SAVED by that demonstration of ultimate power?** I have no idea, we can’t count the saved, only the dead. I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats...~Benjamin Franklin

User	abuzzbuzz92 | 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	BASICALLY, what people are saying is that it is okay for the Nuclear states to keep their bombs and not allow others to make them. I really do not know what to say.

User	Chell | 2006-11-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	"Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?." – Except of a letter to President Roosevelt from Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd (Hungarian-American physicist who conceived the nuclear chain reaction and worked on the Manhattan Project)

User	Blue Monk | 2006-11-07 |
Subject	untitled
Message	"that was America" The honorable but misled Japanese would have fought to the last person except that their leaders saw futility in keeping on. How many millions were SAVED by that demonstration of ultimate power? This is a fact of military history, something many tend to overlook, as was the fact that conventional bombing had already done as much or more damage to both Japanese and German cities. The bomb has not been used since, even though we could have easily taken over the world at that time had that been our inclination. Instead, we rebuilt both Germany and Japan into modern industral powers having no more need for war. Hitler and his ilk would never have been so kind. For this the world hates us?

User	Blue Monk | 2006-11-07 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Considering that the aforementioned manicial persons managed to kill millions of their own people and immediate neighbors without the "benefit" of nukes, would you be speaking German, Russian, etc. by now or just be dead?

User	Chell | 2006-11-07 |
Subject	untitled
Message	"What if Hitler, Tojo, Mao or Stalin had it first?" I imagine they would have pushed a couple buttons and killed somtehing like 172,000 human beings- men, women, children, toddlers, infants, newborns, fetuses; the elderly, the handicapped, the blind, the sick, the poor, etc. Ohhh, wait, that was America.

User	DaGrimReaperess | 2006-11-07 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Thats the same thing as bush having it.

User	Blue Monk | 2006-11-07 |
Subject	untitled
Message	What if Hitler, Tojo, Mao or Stalin had it first? Are there any others like that out there?

User	abuzzbuzz92 | 2006-11-07 |
Subject	untitled
Message	What exactly do you mean by ’wrong hands?’ Who decides which country can not have nuclear weapons??