DEMOCRATS' HIDDEN AGENDA, ANNIHILATION OF THE SPECIES

NewScientist.com news service, billing itself as The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service, currently features an anti-US article headlined: Hiroshima bomb may have carried hidden agenda. The article reads in part:

The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.

Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

"He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species," says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. "It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity."

According to the official US version of history, an A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later, to force Japan to surrender. The destruction was necessary to bring a rapid end to the war without the need for a costly US invasion.

But this is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US. They are presenting their evidence at a meeting in London on Thursday organised by Greenpeace and others to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the bombings.

Very loaded language for a science news service: New Scientist should stick to science and leave politics and history to others.

The decision to use the bomb, and indeed, how to use the bomb, were not easy ones, with lots of factors to consider. Japan was, for all practical purposes, defeated well prior to the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, Japan had not yet surrendered and there were serious doubts that it would do so unless invaded. Thus, immediately after the defeat of Germany, the US was eager for the Soviets to become involved in the invasion of Japan. By the time the bomb proved workable the US government was no longer so keen for Soviet involvement, having observed Stalin's duplicitous behaviour in Europe.

Using the bomb hastened the Japanese surrender, made invasion unnecessary and kept Soviet forces out of Japan. In the end many thousands more lives were saved by the bombs than were lost through their use. If using the bombs also sent a message to Stalin, great.