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August 06, 2004
The Very First WMD
Fifty-nine years ago today, the very first WMD was employed--against an innocent civilian population. The same government that nuked two Japanese cities, killing around 200,000 people, today claims the right to determine who shall be permitted to possess WMD.
Ralph Raico has an excellent piece on the subject today at LewRockwell.com. (It's actually an excerpt from a chapter he wrote for a book.) My choice for best quote from this article comes from Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's chief of staff:
"[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
Tell that to all those "conservatives" who stick up for Truman.
Posted by Mike Tennant at August 6, 2004 09:38 AM