When is it terrorism, and when is it not? [long post]

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bsobel

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Dec 9, 2001
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The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of no direct military value whatsoever. They were attacks made by the military on civilians.

Untrue.

"By the end of the war, most of Japan's major cities had been destroyed by U.S. air attacks. Hiroshima was still intact. The reasons Hiroshima was chosen as the target for the A-bombing are assumed to be the following. The size and the shape of the city was suited to the destructive power of the A-bombs. Because Hiroshima had not been bombed, ascertaining the effects of the A-bomb would be relatively easy. Hiroshima had a high concentration of troops, military facilities and military factories that had not yet been subject to significant damage. "

"The first atomic bomb ever used against a civilian population was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. The city was chosen because it was a major port and a manufacturing center for aircraft and synthetic fuel. "

"Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki was chosen as a target because it was a major naval and shipbuilding center. In fact at the time of the bombing, the Nagasaki shipyards were the largest privately-owned shipyards in Japan."

You'll find your arguments work better if you try sticking to facts.

Bill

 

Marshallj

Platinum Member
Mar 26, 2003
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Originally posted by: DoctorPizza
The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of no direct military value whatsoever.


This is not true. Japan proved itself willing to fight to the death, and they were prepared to do so when we finally invaded Japan.

But after demonstrating the unstoppable power of just one bomb, they quickly realized that they could not stop us from destroying their country, no matter how hard they fought... resistance was futile. After we dropped a second bomb two days later, they had no choice but to surrender to our terms.

Yes, many people died as a result of dropping those 2 bombs. But many more people would have surely died had we not used them and instead invaded Japan with troops. They would have fought to the death hoping to defeat us, and we would have had to keep killing them until there was no one left to fight.

Dropping those bombs took the fight right out of them.
 

AbsolutDealage

Platinum Member
Dec 20, 2002
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absolutdealage makes some good points in his post... but I'm going to take one part of his post and throw it out to add another branch to this thread... he states that "A terrorist does not place low-level radioactive material in the soil surrounding a city hoping that in 10 years the population feels some ill effect, the terrorist detonates some enriched highly-radioactive material in an airburst, attempting to kill as many people as possible. "
I would propose that the terrorist's only goal is not to kill as many as possible in that first detonation, but to frighten as many as possible in the ensuing mayhem... hence the term terror-ism...

This was not really the intent of my reply, it was just kind of a summary of why I think this is not terrorism. I was merely trying to give you an example that included the "radioactive" twist. Perhaps a better thing to say would be "A terrorist does not set 50 pounds of C4 in the middle of the sidewalk hoping someone will trip and stub their toe, the terrorist straps it to his chest and blows a square city block into oblivion"
 

Marshallj

Platinum Member
Mar 26, 2003
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I'd also like to point out that the conventional bombing raids of Tokyo and Dresden killed more people than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. When we firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, many more people lost their lives than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But those raids didn't have the implications that the atomic bombing had. Those attacks took huge waves of bombers, while the atomic bombings only took one plane to drop the bomb.

The firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden did not cause the enemy to surrender, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did.
 

drewshin

Golden Member
Dec 14, 1999
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They were of the highest military value. They got Japan to surrender. That is the goal in warfare.

well hot damn, just use the damn a-bomb everytime we go to war!

 

Mookow

Lifer
Apr 24, 2001
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Originally posted by: drewshin
They were of the highest military value. They got Japan to surrender. That is the goal in warfare.

well hot damn, just use the damn a-bomb everytime we go to war!

Given that:
a) the radiological effects of the atomic bomb were not understood at the time, and
b) the japanese economy had ramped into FULL war production, meaning just about everyone's just supported the war effort, and
c) japan's military had gotten to the point where they were training old women to attack american soldiers with spears, and planned to use them as military units, and
d) The loss of life incurred by the bombing was lower than the projected loss of american soldiers alone (not counting japanese lives that would have been lost in the invasion)

dropping the bomb in 1945 was justified.

That doesnt mean I think we should nuke Bagdad. But, in the post I made I did not make a judgment over the decision to drop the bomb, I refuted the claim that it served "no military value whatsoever"
 

Morph

Banned
Oct 14, 1999
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Originally posted by: Mookow

dropping the bomb in 1945 was justified.
That is your opinion. Please don't state it as fact. Some of us believe that using a WMD as horrible as the Atom bomb is NEVER justifiable.
 

bsobel

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Dec 9, 2001
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That is your opinion. Please don't state it as fact. Some of us believe that using a WMD as horrible as the Atom bomb is NEVER justifiable.

Even if that usage saves more lives than if it's not used?

Bill


 

DoctorPizza

Banned
Jun 4, 2001
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until you are your own country with government and recognized by other nations as a country you're a terrorist organization that commits terrorist acts. ira has no government (no political recognization),
The IRA is the paramilitary arm of Sinn Fein (or Sinn Fein is the political arm of the IRA). Sinn Fein is a recognized political party with seats in the British Parliament (though they have thus far refused to occupy the seats they have won). Does one actually have to have one's own nation to count as legitimate? Or merely be fighting for one?

therefore commits terrorism. the free french resistance, from what i just looked up does not represent the french government but just a group of people, so its a terrorist organization.
The Free French Resistance were supported, though perhaps only tacitly, by both the exiled French government and the British government.

Where it gets shady is terrorist organizations supported by governments. and whether those organizations are merely supported or are an arm of the government. iran, syria, iraq...
Would that cover, for instance, CIA support for the Mujahaddin?
 

DoctorPizza

Banned
Jun 4, 2001
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Japan would quite probably have surrendered anyway, due to the Russian decision to enter the war, so the necessity is questionable; it is opined that the bombs were dropped as much to warn the Russians as to make the Japanese surrender.

 

RyanM

Platinum Member
Feb 12, 2001
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Originally posted by: syf3r
Fact: During the first Gulf War, coalition forces dropped at least 300 tons of depleted uranium on the nation of Iraq:
source1: http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/gulfwar.shtml For those who might immediately think it's a propaganda site, please note the .MIL extension.
source2: United Nations Coalition on Human Rights, Summary record of 482nd Meeting, 13 April, 1999.
Greenpeace places this number at 800 tons, and some estimates place this number at 2700 tons.

Ummm....HELLO?

Depleted Uranium is not something that is "dropped" indisciminately.

It's a material that is use in high-density armor piercing machine gun rounds so slam through the hulls of tanks and other similar armored equipment.

It's not in bombs. It's not "Dropped". It's fired. And as they've pointed out, the health risks associated with the inhalation of atomized DU rounds fired from machine guns is minimum to nil.
 

syf3r

Senior member
Oct 15, 1999
673
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MachFive:

Umm... I don't know what you're talking about... DU is most certainly used in bombs... It's 5x as heavy as lead... It's what allows the new generation of so-called "bunker buster" to penetrate so deep. See Lockheed/Martin patent application #6,389,977 for shrouded aerial bomb at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u23.htm#USpatreport. These are the bombs that are being used in Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, DU rounds are pyrophoric; they generate uranium dust on impact with a hard surface, which then spontaneously ignites and burns the target.
As for whether or not they are indiscriminate... War is not a video game, where it all disappears as soon as the "game" is over... If you've got DU-tipped rounds being fired all over the desert, millions upon millions upon millions of them being fired over the course of a war, and they all come to rest all across the desert and towns and villages, every single one of them emitting a little bit of radiation over the years, that's indiscriminate. It's no longer been fired just at the tank or the enemy installation... It's still there, still emitting radiation... And the only thing I can say to your comment about the amount of radiation being next to nothing, I would ask you if you would be willing, no matter how small the amount of radiation, to fill your matress with depleted uranium and sleep on it for a decade... would you still think it's next to nothing, or would you start to be a little concerned when it's you and not some arab on the other side of the world? The fact is that depleted uranium is just that.. depleted radioactive material... It's radioactive waste, which the military is able to purchase almost for free, (in some cases for free) and they use it in weapons on the other side of the world... Essentially it's a very easy way to dump your nuclear waste when you disguise it as a weapon....

/syf3r
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
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Originally posted by: syf3r
MachFive:

Umm... I don't know what you're talking about... DU is most certainly used in bombs... It's 5x as heavy as lead... It's what allows the new generation of so-called "bunker buster" to penetrate so deep. See Lockheed/Martin patent application #6,389,977 for shrouded aerial bomb at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u23.htm#USpatreport. These are the bombs that are being used in Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, DU rounds are pyrophoric; they generate uranium dust on impact with a hard surface, which then spontaneously ignites and burns the target.
As for whether or not they are indiscriminate... War is not a video game, where it all disappears as soon as the "game" is over... If you've got DU-tipped rounds being fired all over the desert, millions upon millions upon millions of them being fired over the course of a war, and they all come to rest all across the desert and towns and villages, every single one of them emitting a little bit of radiation over the years, that's indiscriminate. It's no longer been fired just at the tank or the enemy installation... It's still there, still emitting radiation... And the only thing I can say to your comment about the amount of radiation being next to nothing, I would ask you if you would be willing, no matter how small the amount of radiation, to fill your matress with depleted uranium and sleep on it for a decade... would you still think it's next to nothing, or would you start to be a little concerned when it's you and not some arab on the other side of the world? The fact is that depleted uranium is just that.. depleted radioactive material... It's radioactive waste, which the military is able to purchase almost for free, (in some cases for free) and they use it in weapons on the other side of the world... Essentially it's a very easy way to dump your nuclear waste when you disguise it as a weapon....

/syf3r

As I posted earlier some comments from one of your links:

a hypothetical driver who stays continuously inside a "heavy armor" (HA) tank (a model using DU armor panels), fully loaded with only DU ammunition with the gun pointed to the rear?24 hours a day, 365 days a year?would receive a dose of approximately 1.14 rem (8,760 hours at 0.00013 rem/hr),[72] or less than 25 percent of the current, annual occupational limit of 5 rem. Studies also have shown the maximum dose rate outside the tank approaches 0.0003 rem/hour at the front of a heavy armor turret or over a fully loaded ammunition compartment.[73] Continuous exposure at that rate for 24 hours a day for 365 days would produce an annual dose of about 2.6 rem (8,760 hours at 0.0003 rem/hr), slightly more than half the annual occupational limit. Fortunately, these continuous exposure scenarios represent impossible situations. Actual exposures based on realistic times spent in the tanks (904 hours per training year) are likely to be less than 0.1 rem in a year.[74]

Sounds like someone who's out in the sun all day has more of a chance to contract skin cancer than would someone laying on a bed made of DU.
 

syf3r

Senior member
Oct 15, 1999
673
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conjur:

Yeah, but that link cites military-sponsored studies of the effects of exposure to DU. Keep in mind that it is attached to a military disclosure of their use of DU weapons. So while they're admitting that they use DU weapons, they have a vested interest in downplaying the health effects of those weapons. There is a lot of info out there about those studies and how the information in them is skewed, most specifically in that the studies are purposely incomplete, or that they are carried out many years too late; so late, in fact, that many of the victims of DU have already died. There is also a lot of information available on the net which is freely available and contrary to the military studies. Specifically, there are health studies performed in Iraq in the last decade, in the Balkans after 1998-99, and also in Vieques, Puerto Rico, which the Navy uses as a bombing site. Apparently there is an increasing rate of strange cancers and leukemia in Puerto Rico in the last decade. I'm currently picking through this page: http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm and the PDF document at the bottom of that page which are a compilation of public domain information dealing with cancers related to DU and gulf war syndrome after the Balkans conflict, and the assault on Tora Bora in afghanistan and the resulting phenomenon known as the 'Kabul haze'.

/syf3r
 

Mean MrMustard

Diamond Member
Jan 5, 2001
3,144
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Originally posted by: NightTrain
Originally posted by: DoctorPizza
very simple, country/not a country...
Are the IRA terrorists?

How about the Free French Resistance in WWII?


IMO, terrorists attack indiscriminately with the sole intention of killing the largest number of people in the most public way possible.

So 1. Yes
2. No

So dropping 300 tons of explosives doesn't have "the sole intention of killing the largest number of people in the most public way possible?"
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
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Originally posted by: ELP

So dropping 300 tons of explosives doesn't have "the sole intention of killing the largest number of people in the most public way possible?"
Not necessarily. If dropped on an AA site, radar site, etc. the aim is just to destroy equipment. Besides, the way to kill the largest # of people in the most public way is either nuclear or carpet bombing. Surgical strikes are the m.o. in today's American military.
 

AbsolutDealage

Platinum Member
Dec 20, 2002
2,675
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Originally posted by: syf3r
conjur:

Yeah, but that link cites military-sponsored studies of the effects of exposure to DU. Keep in mind that it is attached to a military disclosure of their use of DU weapons. So while they're admitting that they use DU weapons, they have a vested interest in downplaying the health effects of those weapons. There is a lot of info out there about those studies and how the information in them is skewed, most specifically in that the studies are purposely incomplete, or that they are carried out many years too late; so late, in fact, that many of the victims of DU have already died. There is also a lot of information available on the net which is freely available and contrary to the military studies. Specifically, there are health studies performed in Iraq in the last decade, in the Balkans after 1998-99, and also in Vieques, Puerto Rico, which the Navy uses as a bombing site. Apparently there is an increasing rate of strange cancers and leukemia in Puerto Rico in the last decade. I'm currently picking through this page: http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm and the PDF document at the bottom of that page which are a compilation of public domain information dealing with cancers related to DU and gulf war syndrome after the Balkans conflict, and the assault on Tora Bora in afghanistan and the resulting phenomenon known as the 'Kabul haze'.

/syf3r

As stated before in this thread, we would like to see a non-propaganda site with a study that proves that DU exposure in the Balkans, or Puerto Rico, or in the Gulf War has directly caused any ill effects.

I have seen altogether too many sites that have information about DU and show horrible pictures of birth defects. Where is the proof that DU caused this? Where is their scientific study? What was thier control group?

In short, the government has done several studies to prove that mild DU exposure has very few side effects...but the opposition has no studies. Whether or not you believe those government studies is irrelavent, you cannot make any claims to the contrary unless you have scientific proof. There are thousands of reasons why the birth defect / cancer rates could go up, but the DU opposition wants us to assume that it must be the DU. It seems that in all the information I can find from the opposition, they conveniently overlooked proving thier argument, and want us all to do the same.

if you would be willing, no matter how small the amount of radiation, to fill your matress with depleted uranium and sleep on it for a decade...

My previous post has illustrated that there are many common household items that have far more radioactive material than military ordinance. If you have a couple of smoke detectors in your house, you might as well be sleeping on ~60 30mm DU rounds.
 

Alistar7

Lifer
May 13, 2002
11,983
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Originally posted by: DoctorPizza
very simple, country/not a country...
Are the IRA terrorists?

How about the Free French Resistance in WWII?

can you not distinguish between a nation committing OFFICIAL acts and acts of terrorism by groups that have no such nation status.

Are the IRA the official govt of Ireland?

The French were attemping to defend their own country that was being occupied by a brutal genocidal dictator, of course they are not terrorists, unless you want to imply they were committing acts of terrorism against the Nazi govt. RULING France...

Was there public notice of the war in 1991, yes, how much warning did those in the towers get?

Were innocent civilians targeted intentionally in 1991? I'm sorry you can't see the difference...