So one deterrent works & one doesn't. Surprise, Surprise. So lets get rid of the one that is working cause others don't. That's logical, not. I'm pretty sure if every county had the nuclear weapons, like every American seems to have a gun, then the deterrent wouldn't work, but that's another issue as it relates to whose finger is on the trigger.
Really don't see what my comments had to do with Corbyn. Although I actually quiet like Corbyn I don't agree with a lot of things he believes in. Anyway, his views are neither here or there as he's never going to be PM. As I said I think there is a strong arguement for not renewing trident, but it needs to be a positive one.
If it's a deterrent we want, let's scrap it and replace it all with cardboard cut-outs. No one will know!
Do you mean I need to read up on YOUR history. Anyway the truth is we don't know how long the war with Japan would have gone on for. I appreciate you might not like other peoples views, but that doesn't make them garbage, just different from yours. I, perhaps unlike you, can understand how someone can hold a strong view on a subject and argue for it without it being garbage, even if I don't agree with it. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I like Corbyn in that he at least acknowledges 'There's a debate to be had'
Ah, but you would if you knew your history, it wouldn't have gone on very long at all. The Japanese were on their knees, almost 70 cities had been devastated and virtually turned to rubble by the American (non-nuclear) carpet bombing campaign during the summer of 1945. Russia had a neutrality pact with the Japanese, and they had hoped to be able to use Stalin as a mediator to get a decent deal out of their impending surrender to the Allies, but when Stalin and the Soviets declared war on the Japanese (in the days between the two atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and invaded Manchuria with a million Soviet troops then that was it for the Japs, the straw that broke the camel's and that had far more of an impact upon their decision to surrender than either of the two atomic bombs that were dropped. I'm not saying everything you say is garbage, this isn't an attack on you or any specific individual, and I'm not saying everything I read that disagree with it merely garbage either, but a lot of stuff I am reading is total and utter garbage I'm afraid and that's why I asked the question if some of these people actually belive what they are saying because I honestly think if people took a step back and listened to themselves, or read what they've written and then take just a small dose of reality I think deep down they'd realise it to be garbage too.
One of the most terrible interviews http://i100.independent.co.uk/artic...-interview-with-jeremy-corbyn-is--ZyeNB4Jh1vg
That's an absolutely brilliant piece, and the best bit about it is it's based on nothing more than simple common bloody sense! No doubt somebody on here will attempt to argue with it however...
My thoughts exactly TMC. How anyone can think Nukes are in anyway a positive thing is completely incomprehensible to me. The only people that win out of nukes are those in power. Everyone else loses. How does killing many millions in retaliation to many million being killed solve anything? How can people continue to buy into the rhetoric that we "Need" a nuclear deterrent? We are not a real nuclear power anyway. More a base for America to be closer to Russia. How can people's morality be so skewed?!
Meanwhile: Boxed up, barely used and 4 years late: Watchkeeper, the Army’s ‘affordable’ £1.2bn drone programme A landmark Ministry of Defence order for 54 battlefield drones that was hailed by ministers a decade ago as an “affordable solution” will be four years late and cost £1.2bn – some £400m more than the public was first told. The order for the Watchkeeper drones was announced by former Defence Secretary John Reid at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2005 when he agreed costs of £800m and told Parliament they would start being ready for service five years later. He also told taxpayers the bespoke order – Britain’s biggest ever on drones – would be “key to battlefield surveillance of the future” and a major boost to the country’s long term involvement in the technology. Yet 10 years after the contract with a consortium led by French defence giant Thales was signed, only 33 of the fleet have been delivered. In all, only three have actually been used in active operations – belatedly in Afghanistan just weeks before the troop withdrawal of late 2014, and for a total of 146 hours, equivalent to two days’ flying each. At the end of June, those three were among only eight under Army control – at Boscombe Down on the Salisbury Plain where they are now used for training. Twenty-one were at a testing centre in west Wales, where most were boxed up in MoD storage. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.c...r-the-armys-affordable-1-2bn-drone-programme/
This is exactly why I'm fine with Corbyn not talking to Journos. Complete waste of time! They only want to belittle the real issues and distract their views form the important things with pointless absurd questioning. If people want to here his views, listen to his many, many speeches that are online. Every single one of them he comes across as incredibly thoughtful, intelligent and sensible. Yet this is the fluff that the majority watch. You can only hope that this interview is panned so widely that it has a real effect and people start to ask why a potential leader of this country is being compared to a ****ing football manager!
I see the Tories have gone a bit quiet on this thread today, which is a shame. As I answered Kemp's pretty straightforward question yesterday I'd have thought he'd have had the decency to answer mine in return?
Just as an aside on the US use of nuclear weapons in Japan the estimated casualties were approx. 200k across the two cities. The civilian casualties arising as a result of the strategic carpet bombing by the US were in excess of 600k. Both pretty damn horrendous but arguably the use of the nukes may have saved Japanese civilian lives as well as those of the combatants and possibly their earlier use may have saved even more lives. TMC is certainly correct in that the American use of nuclear weapons was certainly linked to the imminent entry of the USSR into the pacific theatre and about avoiding the issue of having to deal with countless soviet troops entering Japan and making Japan part of the post-war Soviet sphere of influence. He is also utterly correct in his analysis that the use of nuclear weapons was not necessary to defeat the Japanese - it was merely the vehicle used by the US to apply the coup de grace. To be blunt it was also an arm flexing display by the US to show Stalin what they were capable of at the time they were the only nuclear power on Earth and to rapidly conclude hostilities so that the US would have a strategically stronger position in the Pacific for the post-war period.
But it's a very interesting debate. I don\t think since the 1970's -80's when the CND were seen as the loonie left, due I'm sure to the cold war still causing frostbite on many a voter, that this issue has actually generated some mainstream debate.This was 22 years ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/22/newsid_2489000/2489209.stm
My feeling is that there will be many other debates over the next 5 years which would not have taken place without Corbyn - his election as Labour leader has broadened the spectrum of serious debate. The next issue related to weapons and defence is that of Britain's role as an exporter of weapons - is the real cause of all of the refugee problem really people like Assad or ISIS, or can a large part of the blame be placed on the doorstep of the largest weapon producers/exporters of this World ie. the USA, Russia, China, Germany, France and the UK (who between them are responsible for 77% of all exported weapons) ?
Nobody really knows what the death toll would have been if Japan had been tackled by conventional means. They held a string of well defended islands spread across the Pacific. Iwo Jima alone saw the deathe of 20,000 + Japanese and 12,000 US forces, many of the former committing suicide. It seems likely that casualties would have been similar on many other islands. Once3 US Forces reached the mainland it seems likely that casualties would have continued to mount. The Japanese had very effective propaganda and most cvlilians believed that US forces would torture and slaughter them en masse. Most likely the toll on the mainland would have exceeded the totals of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
