The Truth Game
John Pilger's penetrating documentary which looks at world-wide propaganda surrounding the nuclear arms race. When the two American atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, they were code-named Fat Man and Little Boy, and President Truman announced after the event: The experiment has been an overwhelming success.
These, says Pilger, were words used to describe the awful and horrific carnage of nuclear war. By using reassuring, even soothing language, this new kind of propaganda created acceptable images of war and the illusion that we could live securely with nuclear weapons.
Official truths are examined in connection with the bombing of Hiroshima, the buildup of arms by Russia and America, the siting of nuclear bases by the US in Britain and Europe, Ministry of Defence statements about the Cruise missile base at Greenham Common, and other US bases, the amount of government money spent on weapons, 'Civil defence' arrangements and a NATO 'limited' nuclear and chemical war exercise in West Germany, which Pilger describes as 'a dry run for the unthinkable'.
Many experts give their views, including Paul Warnke who thinks arms reduction is feasible - 'All we need is the political will to go ahead with it'.
Why Hiroshima and Nagasaki Were Nuclear Bombed in 1945.
Is the World's Nuclear Destiny In the Hands Of the US?
The atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were totally unnecessary for all US claimed reasons: Two types of nuclear bombs were used experimentally in order to test their effects on populations and infrastructure, and the effects were kept secret. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because they were relatively unharmed cities. The Japanese were already defeated as their importing of food and supplies was prevented by US forces. The US had decoded Japanese communications four years previously and knew about Japanese offers of surrender long before the atom bombing. The Japanese only rejected US terms of unconditional surrender and wanted to retain their godlike Emperor, the US knew this and only accepted retention of the Emperor after the bombs were dropped. The US was desperate to drop the bombs before the Potsdam agreed date of August 15 1945 for Soviet entry in the war in southeast Asia and their fear of Soviet influence in the region; the US wanted the nuclear bombings of Japan to be a warning to the Soviet Union and the rest of the world of who was now in military control of the world. The US military were not involved in the final decision of the nuclear bombings of Japan, which was a purely political decision at the highest level. US nuclear weapons continue to dominate the world and US policy is to make first use of them.
The US wanted to test the two different types of nuclear bomb, Uranium for Hiroshima and Plutonium for Nagasaki, on thriving live populations and relatively undamaged cities.
"We have already lost Germany… If Japan bows out [surrenders], we will not have a live population on which to test the bomb … our entire postwar program depends on terrifying the world with the atomic bomb. … we are hoping for a million tally in Japan. But if they surrender, we won’t have anything."
(US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, May 1945.)
"Then you have to keep them [the Japanese] in the war until the bomb is ready."
(US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.)
"Keep Japan in the war another three months, and we can use the bomb on their cities; we will end this war with the naked fear of all the peoples of the world, who will then bow to our will. … We have to scare the hell out of em in order to browbeat the American people into paying heavy taxes to support the Cold War.
(US Senator Vandenberg.)
"Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." …
(US Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report, July 1 1946.)
"the Air Force would have Japan so bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength."
(US Secretary of War Stimson to US President Truman, June 6 1945.)
"Hiroshima is the largest untouched target on the 21st Bomber Command priority list. Consideration should be given to this city. … The target used was Hiroshima, the one reserved target where there was no indication of any POW camp."
(Declassified top secret US government memo of an April 27 1945 meeting of top military and nuclear scientists discussing the nuclear bombing of Japan.)
"It was strange to us that Hiroshima had never been bombed, despite the fact that B-29 [US] bombers flew over the city every day. Only after the war did I come to know that Hiroshima, according to American archives, had been kept untouched in order to preserve it as a target for the use of nuclear weapons. Perhaps, if the American administration and its military authorities had paid sufficient regard to the terrible nature of the fiery demon which mankind had discovered and yet knew so little about its consequences, the American authorities might never have used such a weapon against the 750,000 Japanese who ultimately became its victims."
(Japanese doctor in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing Doctor Shuntaro Hida.)
"we brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone… we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred. … The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral."
(US Brigadier General Carter Clarke, in charge of intercepted Japanese communications, which the US had deciphered since 1940.)
"In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. … The damage is far greater than photographs can show. … Of thousands of others, nearer the centre of the explosion, there was no trace. They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great that they burned instantly to ashes, except that there were no ashes. … Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale?" …"In Hiroshima, thirty days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly – people who were uninjured by the cataclysm – from an unknown something which I can only describe as an atomic plague. … I became very conscious of what would happen in the event of a new world war."
(Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett. Wilfred Burchett was the first "western" journalist to enter Hiroshima after the atom bomb. His press permit was then withdrawn, Japanese film of the consequences of the bombing were confiscated, and after reporting other events the Australian government wanted kept secret, his passport was then taken away.)
"No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin."
(New York Times front page headline after the bomb was dropped.)
"the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment… It was a mistake to ever drop it…. [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before."
(Commander of the US Third Fleet Admiral William Halsey, 1946.)
"On the ground, numberless people had fallen, groaning or crying for water, without anyone to help them. The neighbourhood was so full of agonising cries, it was hell on earth... Those who narrowly escaped being killed were left naked, their clothes burnt off. With their blistering skin peeling, they tottered about in the sea of fire... that is A-bombing. People who survived the bombing, and those who entered the city to search for relatives or help victims were struck down by radiation and died after losing their hair and bleeding. After the end of World War II, the US occupational forces and the Japanese government tried to conceal the real condition of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the public by suppressing all reports on the damage of these two cities caused by the A-bombs..."
(Hiroshima atom bomb survivor Sakao Ito.)
The US knew about but rejected various Japanese offers of surrender, some of which were as early as September 1944.
"Went to lunch with P.M. [British Prime Minister Churchill] … Discussed Manhattan [atom bomb testing] (it is a success). Decided to tell Stalin about it. Stalin had told P.M. of telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace."
(US President Truman, in his diary July 18 1945.)
"The assertion that the new American bombs brought the Japanese war to an end is a myth. As we know, weeks before the appearance of the atom bombs, the Emperor Hirohito had already asked Stalin to mediate; thus openly admitting defeat. In reality Japan had been brought down by the interruption of her sea communications by Anglo-American sea power and the danger of a Soviet thrust across Manchuria cutting off the Japanese armies in Asia from home."
(The Times Aug 16 1945.)
"The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs did not defeat Japan, nor… did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender. The [Japanese government] had decided as early as May 1945 that the war should be ended even if it meant acceptance of defeat on allied terms."
(US Strategic Bombing Survey, July 1 1946.)
"the decision to use the atomic weapon against Japan was taken at the beginning of July, 1945. The first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6 and the offer of peace made by Japan on July 22 was not accepted till August 10."
(British Prime Minister Attlee, Dec 5 1946.)
"weeks before the first bomb was dropped, on July 13 1945, Japan sent a telegram to the Soviet Union expressing its desire to surrender and end the war. The United States had broken Japan’s codes [in 1940] and read the telegram. Truman referred in his diary to ‘the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.’ Truman had been informed … of Japanese peace overtures as early as three months before Hiroshima. Japan had objected only to surrendering unconditionally and giving up its emperor, but the United States insisted on those terms until after the bombs fell, at which point it allowed Japan to keep its emperor."
(US historian and author David Swanson, in his book War Is A Lie.)
The US insisted on unconditional surrender including the Emperor; whereas all Japanese offers of surrender were conditional on retaining their Emperor, which the US rejected until after the nuclear bombings.
"On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo. They desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and the constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people."
(US head of the OSS (now CIA) Allen Dulles.)
"This [non removal of the Japanese Emperor] was omitted from the Potsdam declaration [of July 26 1945] and as you are undoubtedly aware was the only reason why it was not immediately accepted by the Japanese who were beaten and knew it before the first atomic bomb was dropped." …"It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world…"
(US Assistant Secretary of the Navy Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss.)
"when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor."
(British Chief of Staff of the Minister of Defence General Hastings Ismay to Churchill.)
"I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria." …"The Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs." … And on May 28 1945 to US President Truman:"I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."
(US President Herbert Hoover.)
"His Majesty is extremely anxious to terminate the war as soon as possible… Our government therefore desires to negotiate for a speedy restoration of peace… For this purpose Prince Konoye will proceed to Moscow with a personal message from the Emperor."
(Japanese Ambassador to Soviet Union Naotaki Sato July 12 1945.)
"See [Soviet foreign minister] Molotov before his departure for Potsdam ... Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure a termination of the war ... Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace ..."
(Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to Japanese Ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow, July 13 1945.)
"Japan is defeated. … We must face the fact and act accordingly."
(Japanese Ambassador in Moscow Naotaki Sato to Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, July 13 1945.)
"Retaining the Emperor was vital to an orderly transition to peace…"
(US Supreme Commander General McArthur.)
"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces and to provide proper and adequate assurance of good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
(The Potsdam declaration issued by US and Britain July 26 1945.)
"MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." …"What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
(US journalist, author and world peace activist Norman Cousins.)
The US knew that the Japanese had no means of importing food and supplies and could not continue the war.
"The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air."
(Commanding General of US Army Air Force Henry Arnold, August 17 1945.)
"It seems clear however that air supremacy and its later exploitation over Japan proper was the major factor which determined the timing of Japan's surrender and obviated any need for invasion."
(US Strategic Bombing Survey, July 1 1946.)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons."
(US Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy to President Truman. In his [Leahy’s] memoirs.)
"I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. …the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. …the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn’t get any imports and they couldn’t export anything."
(US Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard.)
The US was deeply afraid of socialist influence in Asia as everywhere. They did not want the USSR to enter the war in the east. They were determined that the atomic bombs should be a political message to the Soviet Union and the rest of the world.
"The date for the Soviet attack [August 15 1945 agreed at Potsdam. BM.] made it all the more imperative for the United States to drop the bomb in the beginning of August, before the Soviets entered the war. The race between Soviet entry into the war and the atomic bomb now reached its climax. … Justifying Hiroshima and Nagasaki by making a historically unsustainable argument that the atomic bombs ended the war is no longer tenable."
(Japanese born US history professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.)
"If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer." …"Once Russia is in the war against Japan, then Mongolia, Manchuria, and Korea will slip into Russia’s orbit, to be followed in due course by China and eventually Japan."
(US Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew.)
"In March 1944 I experienced a disagreeable shock. In a casual conversation, General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan [nuclear bomb] Project, said, "You realise, of course, that the real purpose of making the bomb is to subdue our chief enemy, the Russians!" Until then I thought that our work was to prevent a Nazi victory."
(British physics Professor Joseph Rotblat, The Times July 17 1985.)
"There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this project, any illusions on my part, but that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was carried out on that basis. I didn't go along with the attitude of the whole country that Russia was our gallant ally."
(US General Leslie Groves, director of the 1945 Manhattan nuclear bomb testing project.)
"We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. … This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10 [to prevent planned August 15 Soviet involvement in the eastern war]. … we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. … It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful."
(US President Truman in his diary, July 25 1945.)
"it wasn't necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war but our possession and demonstration of the bomb would make the Russians more manageable in Europe."
(US Secretary of State James Byrnes.)
"We now had something in our hands which would redress the balance with the Russians."
(British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)
"The atom bomb was no "great decision" …It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness."
(US President Truman.)
The nuclear bombing of Japanese cities was not a military decision, as most top ranking military officers were against it. It was a political decision at the highest level.
"The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan. … The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war." …"The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." …"the decision to employ the atomic bomb on Japanese cities was made on a level higher than that of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
(US Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet Admiral Nimitz.)
"[Marshall's] insistence to me that whether we should drop an atomic bomb on Japan was a matter for the President to decide, not the Chief of Staff since it was not a military question... the question of whether we should drop this new bomb on Japan, in his judgment, involved such imponderable considerations as to remove it from the field of a military decision."
(US Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy.)
"[General Douglas] MacArthur… thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants. … MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off."
(US President Nixon.)
"Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia. … I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds."
(Deputy Director of the US Office of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharius.)
"it was not a military decision, but rather a political one."
(US General George Marshall.)
"In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson… informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan… 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. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…" … "It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing … to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime."
(US General, later President Eisenhower. [It is essential to note that the great majority of US and British government, scientific and armed forces involved were opposed to the use of the nuclear weapons on the Japanese. The most cynical act by the US was that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deliberately kept relatively unharmed so that the two different bombs, uranium and plutonium, were developed and used in order to test their effects on people and cities.])
"The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. … The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all."
(US Major General Curtis LeMay.)
"The atomic bomb, in its present state of development, raises the destructive power of a single bomber by a factor of somewhere between 50 and 250 times… The capacity to destroy… is beyond question. …
(US Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report July 1 1946. Today’s nuclear weapons are many, perhaps hundreds of times, more destructive.)
"If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us," …"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?"
(Leading Manhattan atom bomb project US scientist Leo Szilard.)
"Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."
(Henry Kissinger.)
The US has always had the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; and along with Britain, would undoubtedly conduct first use of them. Destiny in the hands of God’s chosen people?
"Oh I wouldn’t hesitate if I had the choice. I’d wipe ’em out. You’re gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we’ve never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn’t kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: ‘You’ve killed so many civilians.’ That’s their tough luck for being there."
(US pilot of the plane that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima Paul Tibbets.)
"You can have a limited nuclear war. The USA has already fought such a war, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese not only lived through it but are flourishing."
(Director of US Arms Control and Development Agency Eugene Rostow.)
Question: "Do you honestly think, in the final analysis as a human being, a Christian, a father, you could actually recommend to the President to push the button and kill millions of people?" Brzezinski: "Certainly I think I would and I certainly think I would without too much hesitation." Question: "Even though that might make the chance of regeneration of human society that much more difficult, even impossible?" Brzezinski: "Well, first of all, that really is baloney... the fact of the matter is that if we used all our nuclear weapons and the Russians used all of their nuclear weapons, about ten percent of humanity would be killed... but descriptively and analytically, it's not the end of humanity..."
(Polish born US Chief of US National Security Council, CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) and Bilderberg Group (of billionaires) member, Zbignew Brzezinski, interview, International Herald Tribune, Paris, Oct 10 1977.)
"Among the people who knew a great deal about the hydrogen bomb, I was the only advocate of it. … I’m the infamous Edward Teller. … I ask you, what is the difference between 30 million people dead and 130 million people dead? ... With 30 million dead, the United States can survive."
(Hungarian born US nuclear scientist Edward Teller, so called "father" of the hydrogen atomic bomb describing how the US might survive nuclear war.)
"If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima. … The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish."
(US atomic bomb scientist Julius Oppenheimer.)
"The United States has not accepted a treaty rule that prohibits the use of nuclear weapons per se, and thus nuclear weapons are lawful weapons for the United States."
(US Pentagon’s Law of War Manual, 2015. John Pilger in Counterpunch.)
"I am absolutely confident, in the right conditions, we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons."
(British Defence Secretary and MP Geoff Hoon, the Guardian, March 27 2002.)
"Any discussion on the limitation of armaments should be pursued slowly and carefully with the knowledge constantly in mind that proposals on outlawing atomic warfare and long-range offensive weapons would greatly limit United States strength... The United States should realise that Soviet propaganda is dangerous (especially when American"imperialism" is emphasised) and should avoid any actions which give an appearance of truth to the Soviet charges."
(US Special Council Report on American relations with the Soviet Union, 1946.)
"There was no division in the British public mind about the use of the atomic bomb, they were for its use."
(British Prime Minister Attlee to US Secretary of State James Forrestal, 1948. [Which was a complete lie as there was already a massive peace movement developing.])
"We need to ensure that military superiority , particularly technological superiority, remains with nations, above all the United States, that can be trusted with it. We must never leave the sanction of force to those who have no scruples about its use."
(British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. [I wonder who the peoples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki trust with scruples about its use.])
"Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world."
(French writer Jean-Paul Sartre.)
"The American people would execute you if you did not use the bomb in the event of war."
(US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.)
"1. To evaluate the effect on the war effort of the USSR of the Strategic Air Offensive contemplated in current war plans, including an appraisal of the psychological effects of atomic bombing on the Soviet will to wage war...
9. Physical damage... 30 to 40 percent reduction of Soviet industrial capacity. This loss would not be permanent and could either be alleviated by Soviet recuperative action or augmented depending upon the weight and effectiveness of follow up attacks...
11. The initial atomic offensive could produce as many as 2,700,000 mortalities, and 4,000,000 additional casualties, depending upon the effectiveness of Soviet passive defense measures...
12. The atomic offensive would not, per se, bring about capitulation, destroy the roots of Communism or critically weaken the power of Soviet leadership...
13. For the majority of Soviet people, atomic bombing would validate Soviet propaganda against foreign powers, stimulate resentment against the United States, unify these people and increase their will to fight. Among an indeterminate minority, atomic bombing might stimulate dissidence...
18. Atomic bombing will produce certain psychological and retaliatory reactions detrimental to the achievement of Allied war objectives and its destructive effects will complicate post-hostilities problems."
(US government Evaluation of Effect on Soviet War Effort Resulting from the Strategic Air Offensive. May 11 1949)
"Fundamental national interests require the United States to use military force in defense of our interests with comparative freedom if it should become necessary to do so not only in Europe, but in other strategically critical parts of the world. In my view – and I speak for President Reagan – this must remain the minimum goal of our nuclear arsenal."
(Former Director of US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Eugene Rostow.)
"We thought we left the nuclear threat behind with the end of the Cold War, but now President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have said they are willing to consider pre-emptive strikes with nuclear weapons. It’s quite something… that the nuclear threats today should be seen first and foremost as coming from the Unites States of America and Great Britain… If I were a North Korean, I would be very, very worried."
(Former US CIA officer Ray McGovern.)
"Possible U.S. Actions Regarding Indochina… The employment of atomic weapons is contemplated in the event that such course appears militarily advantageous."
(US Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Arthur Radford, May 1954. [The US offered the use of nuclear bombs to the French at Dien Ben Phu in Vietnam, and has offered or threatened to use nuclear weapons on several occasions since August 1945.])
"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of our great nation."
(George Bush, 2001.)
"Give me the order to do it and I can break up Russia's five A-bomb nests in a week. And when I went up to Christ, I think I could explain to him why I wanted to do it - now - before it's too late. I think I could explain to him that I had saved civilisation."
(US Army Air Force General Orville Anderson, 1950.)
"The Washington Times Herald wrote: "We shall send aeroplanes that fly at 40,000 feet. We shall load them with atom, incendiary and desease-bearing bombs. We shall slay the infants in their cradles, the old at their prayers, the workers at their toil." I shall never say that projects of such a kind would emanate from decent Americans... It may be replied that newspapers are produced by irresponsible people. Very well, I shall allow myself to quote... responsible members of the United States Congress: John Walsh, Congressman from Indiana: "America will flood Russia with atom bombs... We have at least 250 bombs and hundreds of ways of getting to Russia." Mr. Johnson, Senator from South Carolina: "The USA will no longer wage war in the remote corners of the world, but will carry it to the very heart of Communist Russia"."
(Ilya Ehrenburg, quoting US newspapers and Government officials, at the 1950 Warsaw peace congress.)
"We must be prepared for waging a conventional war that may extend to many parts of the globe. It will become increasingly difficult in the near future to protect US overseas interests with conventional weapons... I have in mind situations far from our shores,... where we would have difficulty, from a logistics point of view, at least, in reaching the areas in which we have considerable US interests. Such situations could well involve a non nuclear power... We just would not have the capability… to take care of the situation with conventional force...
Now, and for the future, we have an added motivation... That motivation is the need for the United States to look more and more overseas for the resources to provide economic strength... we will be looking increasingly towards Africa and the Middle East, as well as South America, for the materials required by our industrial economy... We will require free access and intercourse with many far distant nations of the world in order to remain a leading export - import nation
We may have confrontations with non-nuclear states such as Cuba. We may have confrontations with nuclear or non-nuclear nations whose geographical location is such that we have no adequate means of protecting our interests with conventional weapons... The use of nuclear weapons with varying capabilities might be the only effective method of accomplishing our objectives, protecting our interests… I think in the future we may get into areas where it will be increasingly difficult to maintain stability with conventional forces, and nuclear weapons will be our only alternative."
(US Vice Admiral Gerald Miller, Congressional Testimony, March 18 1976.)
"We cannot afford, through any misguided and perilous idea of avoiding an aggressive attitude, to permit the first blow to be struck against us. Our government, under such conditions, should press the issue to a prompt political decision, while making all preparations to strike the first blow if necessary."
(US Joint Chiefs of Staff directives 1496/2 and SWNCC 282.)
"[use atomic bombs to] create a belt of scorched earth across the avenues of communism to block the Asiatic hordes."
(US General McArthur’s Director of Intelligence General Willoughby, The Times, June 2 1954.)
"Civilisation will rid itself of communism as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are being written just at this moment... The Western world won't contain communism, it will survive it. We shall not be content to condemn it, we shall get rid of it."
(Ronald Reagan, at Notre Dame University, May 15 1982.)
"You have survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it can inflict on you. That's the way you can have a winner..."
(US President George Bush, in a Los Angeles Times interview in 1980, explaining how a nuclear war could be won.)
"The simple fact of the matter is that... it is possible that with nuclear weapons there can be some use of them... in connection with what is up to that time a war solely within a European theatre."
(US Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger, Oct 27 1981.)
"The idea of a "limited" nuclear war is a myth... A nuclear conflict, even if it starts in Europe, will turn into a general nuclear war within hours, and its flames will spread to the US too."
(US Admiral Gene Larocque, Director of the Center for Defense Information, Sept 5 1983.)
"In reality, any war in central Europe would rapidly escalate into an all-out nuclear war."
(British American Security Information Council.)
"It would be advantageous to use tactical nuclear weapons and chemical weapons at an early stage. Options at this stage should include deep nuclear strikes."
(From US Army Training Manual "Airland Battle 86".)
"I would request the use of theatre nuclear weapons at a time when I could not accomplish my mission conventionally."
(NATO Supreme Commander in Europe, US General Rogers, two days after the Soviet Union's pledge of no first use of nuclear weapons at the UN.)
"It is still possible, I believe, to fight some wars using conventional forces that don't involve nuclear weapons... Any time you get into a war the possibility that you will use every weapon available has to be left open."
(US Secretary of Defence Casper Weinberger, on being asked if he would have used nuclear weapons in Vietnam, January 6 1981.)
"High Military Officers in the Pentagon have been saying they cannot be expected to fight a conventional war for longer than a few days if millions of Americans are able to watch it night after night on their television screens. Public revulsion would create intolerable pressures to scale back or end the fighting altogether, as happened in Vietnam."
(Washington correspondent of the London Evening Standard, Nov 5 1986.)
"The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointed at you; we’d be doing nothing more that giving them a little of their own medicine… After all, the Unites States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadn’t given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans. Our conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules and limits as the Americans."
(Soviet President Nikita Kruschev in his memoires Kruschev Remembers.)
"Let us keep repeating what has been said a thousand times already, in case it is left unsaid once too often!. Let us keep renewing our warnings even if they are like ashes in our mouths! For the wars of the past seem like tame experiments compared with those which now threaten humanity, and they will happen, beyond a doubt, if those who are preparing them in full public view do not get their fingers smashed."
(German writer, poet and journalist Berthold Brecht.)
"Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. was part of the crew that sold Saddam Hussein the deadly means to wage war with anthrax germs. That’s when the United States wanted the ‘Butcher of Baghdad’ to use anthrax on Iran."
(US Air Force Major Glenn MacDonald. )
"I do not understand this squeemishness about the use of gas … I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be good...and it would spread a lively terror..."
(British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 1919.)
"Biological warfare is the deliberate introduction of disease producing organisms into populations of people, animals and plants. The organisms are the same as those found in nature, but can be selected and cultured to be more virulent and resistant than those found in nature... It is difficult to prove guilt of an attack under certain circumstances... and if the organisms are delivered in stealth, it could be argued that the situation is the result of a spontaneous epidemic... Against unprotected populations the effectiveness of large scale biological attacks may be comparable to the effects of nuclear weapons... Biological weapons are extremely suitable for covert use, such as sabotage. They work by delayed action; they are difficult to detect, and only a small quantity is needed."
(Declassified Special Subcommittee document, US Senate, May 1960.)
"People today are much more willing to accept the humane use of bacteriological and chemical warfare than most world leaders recognise... The Communists have claimed we are using chemical warfare and killing many people with these agents. These chemicals are relatively harmless to warm blooded animals including humans.. I do not think chemical and bacteriological warfare has the horror it is pictured."
(US Brigadier General Rothschild, Chemical Officer, US Far East Command, April 1966.)
"Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease."
(US Department of Defense Appropriations, 1970. [US and British and NATO chemical and biological weapons are now much more fully developed and have been used against many countries.])
"The use of cluster bombs is entirely appropriate. Against certain targets they are the best and most effective weapons we have."
(British Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon, November 2001.)
"Extensive areas of Australia have been contaminated."
(Dr. Hedley Marston, investigating contamination from British nuclear bomb testing in Australia.)
"During the two and a half years I was there I would have seen 400 to 500 Aborigines in contaminated areas. Occasionally we would bring them in for decontamination Other times we just shooed them off like rabbits."
(Patrick Connolly, RAF officer during British nuclear bomb testing in Australia; after which he was threatened by the British Special Branch for divulging information.)
"There was this bang, really loud… black smoke came rolling through the trees and above the trees and passed right over us. I don’t know how many days after that, but most of the people became sick… some people died… I got sick… I went blind then… that’s a mystery to ordinary people. I think only the government people know. They wanted to make a weapon… they worried about some other countries; so they come over to Australia… they just wanted to make something big and powerful and blow somebody up."
(Aboriginal Australian Yami Lester, British television documentary, May 21 1985.)
"You don’t know southerners. We carry our artillery in our pocket. If you don’t cut out all this stalling and let us get down to work, I’m going to pull an atomic bomb out of my pocket and let you have it."
(US Secretary of State James Byrnes to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, in London, September 1945.)
"I have long believed that there is a divine plan which has entrusted this land to a people with a special destiny."
(US President Ronald Reagan, 1981.)
"What are they going to say about us? What are those people 100 years from now going to think? They will know whether we used those weapons... Well; what they will say about us a hundred years from now depends on how we keep our rendesvous with destiny. Will we do the things that we know must be done and know that one day down in history, a hundred years or perhaps before someone will say 'thank God for those people back in the 1980s for preserving our freedom, for saving for us this blessed planet called Earth'."
(US President Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 television election debate.)
"if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."
(US Secretary of State Czech born Madeleine Albright, NBC Today, February 19 1998.)
"We are the chosen. … We are the highest species of humanity on this earth... we have a correspondingly high duty."
(Adolf Hitler.)
"I believe that we have a historic duty to perform."
(British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Tory Party Conference, October 1986.)
"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope for man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
(US President Ronald Reagan, 1964.)
"We are chosen by Destiny to be the witnesses of a catastrophe."
(Adolf Hitler.)
"You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if – if we're the generation that's going to see that one come about."
(US President Ronald Reagan.)
"I have read the Book of Revelations and yes, I believe the world is going to end."
(US Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger.)
"If it takes a bloodbath... let's get it over with."
(US President Ronald Reagan.)
"At some point, we may be the only ones left. That’s okay with me. We are America."
(US President George Bush, 2002.)
The drop sites were chosen to eradicate a bio/techno super weapon. It almost worked, the resiliency of the adapting monster was underestimated. Today people call it morgellons and think fibers growing from human skin is a dermelogical problem. Groups of victims want to blame a certain chemical company, aliens or god. This monster will continue to learn grow and "adapt" until it has infected everything on earth. Before you start to argue what can or cannot happen scientifically you should research. Do yourself the favor and start with the documented parasites that have attached to human brains, without killing the host. This same biologically plyable parasite can also live in any organic matter and just mutate up the DNA chain. I should mention that every government denies the existence of this parasite. So the complete destruction of these areas was an attempt at a preemptive resolution. I do not care if you believe me or not , I promised a dying relative years ago that I would one day share with others this information. We feel that as American citizens, we know it all and science doesn't change, governments are all very honest. This is some nut case looking for attention. The only attention I want is for your children, grandchildren and so on, to not be a host to a suer parasite. I assure you had America not "nuked" these areas we would already be over run. I sincerely hope everyone that reads this takes interest and research. Cause a little acne and red fibers leads to wormholes and your mind no longer being you own.
The reactions I get have always greatly puzzled and troubled me when I bring up this topic with friends or in a forum like this. The likelihood (in actuality the inevitability) of nuclear war occurring- as long as we are not in the process of disarmament, is the greatest threat we have ever encountered and far out shadows any current crisis we face today. We show great concern for things like climate change (which nuclear war would catastrophically amplify anyway), while putting out of mind the real pot of boiling oil, which is nuclear war. It is the only real issue of such terrifyingly immediate and devastating proportions in geopolitics today, and yet even the most radical people I know are in a state of denial over its likelihood. We have governments that are willing to enslave billions and yet we think they would not be just as willing to slaughter us? If power does indeed corrupt, then can a leader be both corrupt and rational? For all my life I have felt uneasy that the human fate is going to be one of either collective suicide, or at best extreme decimation as a result of nuclear war and there have been no new developments in this world that have lessened that threat in the least. It is in fact a wonder to me that we have made it this long.
When I first heard the term 'The Age of Anxiety,' I felt certain that it referred to condition caused by the threat of thermonuclear war hanging over our heads 24/7. In fact, my whole life has been lived under the threat of war of one kind or another, real or devised. I later found out it was a poem about life in the industrial age, but I find the constant specter of a war of self-annihliation more fitting. It explains the constant agitating state of subconscious anxiety that explains so much of both our denial and our irrationality. It makes every other social problem seem almost trivial, so easy to fix in comparison. And against such a possibility is the sorrowful conclusion that all we say and do today will have no future meaning anyway, so what exactly is the point of all this anyway? The only point I would say is to work toward disarmament- the thing that people seem to be least willing to do. One thing to me is certain: as long as these weapons exist and as long as there is no dialogue about what to do regarding their reduction and hopefully their eventual elimination, the chances of major nuclear war are very high.
What worry's me is while the U.S. stuck with the Treaty's with Russia and unzipped our fly the Russians started building newer more advanced ICBMs and Cruise missiles before 9/11. They would scrap one and make a newer one. These i*iots in Washington need to get a dam clue. Russia has some balls to whine about our missile defense systems while they have the same dam thing in the S400 system.. Hopefully HAARP or some other system really can knock them all down at once and that is why our brilliant leaders are not to concerned with the Russian updated nukes.
Well hey, keep it up one someone's bound to blink. After the big nuclear war no one will be thinking about these advancements or any others for that matter. I'd say we would be very lucky if the surviving humans after a nuclear holocaust amounted in the millions living in isolated pockets. Extinction is not at all unlikely. Yet pundits like yourself continue to talk as if there is some to control these weapons. What is your vision? That one superpower would be so overwhelmingly powerful that no leader would dare ever challenge it? Do you think that we are that rational?
Perhaps John Pilger would show the opening of the BELSEN Camp and some of the others. As children and soon after the last War we were taken to the Cinema to see the opening of that camp so that we would "never forget" We never did. So, what went on in the other camps in the Far East? I know a little because a Cousin of ours was in one but were liberated by those Americans.
US army is killing people all the time around the globe. One f***ing Pearl Harbour is no excuse to blow two whole citys with nuclears.
And yet with one atrocity, as many as a million people may have been saved.
Wars are not as black and white as you make it out to be.
Oh good...so long as you can find a good excuse for the mass murder of hundreds and thousands of non combatants including children...the greater good and all that.
It must be reassuring to know that the ends justify the means...after all it's better to kill families and children sitting defenceless in their homes than it is to let soldiers who volunteered for the job go out and fight.
Actually, for what it's worth, I disagree with the dropping of bombs. But things look different when you're going to lose tons of your own men when you can destroy a few cities. Tell me, what makes the lives of your own men any less valuable than your enemies? Don't start playing judge and act like you have the right to decide who is more valuable. There are also military objectives that must be completed to end a war, which ends combat and further losses.
Also, how familiar are you with the state of Japan at that point? Japanese soldiers passed out weapons to children and told them to kill their families. There is one such child who talked about this after killing his own family shortly before being picked up by US military. This was a culture that had given much of its civilian population basic training exercises and had made plans to turn the noncombatants into combatants. Surrender was not an option, and their believe in the divine destiny of Japan, much as Rome in its infancy, was enough to continue the fighting.
This wasn't a western culture. They had very different mindsets than Americans, and the casualties from going in there would have been enormous. Now remember, I am against the dropping of the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but don't think that being against is the only legitimate viewpoint and that those that used the bomb were irrational. Also consider that the bomb had never been tested in war, and no one knew its full effects until later
i think it's worth noticing that there is a very big difference between volunteer troops, and non combatant men women and children who are in there homes, of absolutly no threat and with no way of escaping.
a lot of what ifs there...i'd just hope nobody starts making what if statements about you or I if that's all it takes to justify a genocide.
What if statements? They weren't "potentially dangerous." Japan's population had effectively become mixed into the war.
And don't get me started on "volunteer troops." You either have no idea, or your lying, but we had this thing called a draft. Service was mandatory for men of military age.
You seem to think blanket statements and pretty words are enough to so easily judge war and the action of men fighting each other, and I find that more disturbing. Yeah, try going back to any civilization up until now that had a military and tell them what you just told me. See how that works.
Not being an American it had actually slipped my mind that there was a draft...So yeah fair enough on that one.
I'd like to point out that you are also making blanket statements and pretty words in justification of the bombs...For someone whose anti-bomb you seem awfully keen to completely justify the events in which they were used on civillians of whom 160000 including children were killed without trial or warning.
If any other country dared to kill that many civillians in one go it would be called a terrorist nation, and it's actions would be called war crimes...
No military before now ever had the ability to completly wipe out entire cities at a time without leaving the comforts of their own home.
Where I take offense is when people get so judgmental of people from the past when they have no right to do so (except maybe for the most heinous of men). Everything seems more obvious in hindsight, then it does at the time.
If you are getting upset over war crimes, then you clearly don't understand war. War is not this pretty, idealistic thing where you go and you only kill certain things. From a strategic point of view, this is inefficient. If you fall into a pattern predictable to an enemy, then you can't win. Some of the most horrible atrocities on earth have saved countless lives.
Now granted, this isn't morally upright behavior, and this logic is used by people to justify torture and assassination as well. However, it is clear why people do what they do from a tactical point of view. When you have an objective, you complete the objective and ignore anything that slows you down. This is why war should be avoided as much as possible, as the most effective commanders are often the most merciless. History has of course, already demonstrated this.
I think your problem is in considering the lives of civilians as more important than the lives of soldiers, when all lives should be considered as worth the same. There is nothing inherently more valuable about a civilian than a soldier, and vice versa. Soldiers have roles for protecting civilians, but this should not be misconstrued as protecting someone else's civilians. Just because one guy has the ability to fight does not mean that he is less important of an asset. As you keep going on and on about civilians, I am left to conclude this, and the logic confounds me.
Frankly, this is why my heroes are men like Erwin Rommel, who was courteous and a genius, but he also had mastered a type of warfare that had given him an advantage against his opponents from the beginning. He had advantages, and when you do not have those, you secure them. This is why the bombs were dropped.
So the lesson of this should not be "let's go condemn those guys who did their job," because that's moronic and it's a foregone conclusion. This history should make you think about how we ought to behave now, in the modern world, with the destructive power we have. As you may have noticed, no one has been bombed since, and so the world has not turned a blind eye to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
edit: Ah, missed your point about such actions making one a terrorist nation. Terror is a part of war. If you don't strike fear into your enemy, then what do you do? I think however, that a big problem in today's society, is that we are terrorizing countries we are not at war with.
Aside from your gloomy and fatalistic ramblings on the inevitable horror of war, you might want to note that at present we've pretty much run out any objectives for a large war. Not any that would leave many left standing.
I think then the point of old history is to learn our lessons in order to prevent regional conflicts today while obviously dismantling the nuclear weapons which will surely be used sooner or later as long as they exist. We are at the bring of evolution- whether that evolution results in a stabler species or its own self-annhiliation remains to be seen.
One thing is for sure 'defending one's country' (king of the hill) and all that rot belongs to our pathetic past. That you keep it alive as a basis for argument only shows your own morbidity.
They said manned flight would bring an end to the concept of conventional war...right before WW1 broke out.
During that war Wilfred Owen and many others wrote in far better prose than you or I could ever manage about the true futility and pointlessness of war...Here we are nearly a century later, and barely anything has changed.
Don't underestimate humanities capacity to find a reason to slaughter one another.
a_no_n, I don't think it's prose we're writing here! :D
We know our capacity for slaughter; what we don't know is our capacity for change. For constructivism...As long as I breathe I will never give in to feeling hopeless. Why not just jump off a cliff in that case? Time is wasted on those who feel they are doomed.
aaw...just a little pageantry...tis all i ask. lol.
I don't think we're doomed. Far from it. In up to our necks in the slurry sure, but not doomed.
And this time I am in full agreement with you. War is f--king **itty, and everyone and their grandma seems to think that "well now we are civilized enough to stop doing this wretched business."
Frankly we have a lot more to go.
Glad to see someone else can see the bigger picture and also agree that we are not yet totally doomed. Gods, but how I wonder sometimes though.
We aren't doomed but nature will certainly follow its course with a massive reduction of population. Continuous population growth has to come to an end at some point in a closed system. The lack of sufficient resources per capita is always the precursor of a population reduction in nature. My take is in our societies, it will be a precursor of war.
Thats a REALLY crooked way of thinking my friend.
To think otherwise is naive.
Humanity kills to live. We have animals and fish for food, level forests and ecosystems for raw materials, and kill each other for resources.
However, I would agree that necessity alone does not justify killing. For example, it may not always be clear what is necessary, and a subjective mind deciding who lives and who dies is unsound. Everything we then must do must be on a moral basis.
Now, when a country attacks, it must be seen as attacking in order to defend its people, or it will cease to be a country. The rules of war in a "Christian" sense (referring to sociopolitical attitudes and not religious ones) are that you only have the moral right to attack in self-defense, when you yourself are attacked. On this basis alone, our war was justified.
This leaves the question of the nukes, which is a question that honestly doesn't really have any good answer. From a post to another person who disagreed with me.
"Actually, for what it's worth, I disagree with the dropping of bombs. But things look different when you're going to lose tons of your own men when you can destroy a few cities. Tell me, what makes the lives of your own men any less valuable than your enemies? Don't start playing judge and act like you have the right to decide who is more valuable. There are also military objectives that must be completed to end a war, which ends combat and further losses.
Also, how familiar are you with the state of Japan at that point? Japanese soldiers passed out weapons to children and told them to kill their families. There is one such child who talked about this after killing his own family shortly before being picked up by US military. This was a culture that had given much of its civilian population basic training exercises and had made plans to turn the noncombatants into combatants. Surrender was not an option, and their believe in the divine destiny of Japan, much as Rome in its infancy, was enough to continue the fighting.
This wasn't a western culture. They had very different mindsets than Americans, and the casualties from going in there would have been enormous. Now remember, I am against the dropping of the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but don't think that being against is the only legitimate viewpoint and that those that used the bomb were irrational. Also consider that the bomb had never been tested in war, and no one knew its full effects until later"
citing pearl harbour as precedent for not one but 2 nuclear attacks is not justification enough in my opinion. also there is significant evidence that u.s military, intelligence forces and even the president had prior notification of attack at pearl harbour and therefore could have avoided the whole incident.
No the hundreds of thousands that died at the hands of the Japanese after Pearl did, especially their suicide attacks. Not to forget that many many more would have died if we had to invade mainland Japan. You must have forgot all the other nations that were over ran before and after pearl by the Japanese including China. They were just as nuts as Hitler.
Hitler isn't a good example... the Russians managed to deal with him without nuking Berlin.
tell the families of the victims of pearl harbor to take it up with their government, it's been overwhelmingly shown that pearl harbor was not an accident. i shall now quote McLovin, "Read a F@#$%^&* BOOK"
John pilger is one of the best in the business of documentary production and presents impartial reports and whatever is shown in this documentary are totally correct
1983 - I was checking on the year and thought I'd share.
I guess he did overlook Pearl Harbour... though his point is not lost.
Anyway... very good Doc
abfall, tell that to the 2000+ soldiers/sailors who were attacked and died at Pearl Harbor. I bet they'd strongly disagree. >=O
would you be interested in asking the same question to the 160,000 non-combatant civillians who were murdered in their homes in Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
with all respect..that wasnt a war.
He said America was untouched by war, I guess he forgot Pearl Harbor.
oh no, one strike on the frontier of the empire...surely nobody has ever had to deal with such traumatic events before or since.