I've made my points here already, so I'm not jumping back into the waterboarding issue. But I have to comment about one statement you made.
Quote Originally Posted by MMI View Post
Could you compare flying a couple of planes into the WTC with the British/US carpet-bombing of Dresden, or the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The targets were the same: non-combatants. Yes, I know Britain and America were at war with Germany and Japan at the time of Hiroshima and Dresden. But they were both already defeated by then. If any pother countries had done that, we'd have called them war crimes.
Regarding the firebombing of Dresden, and some other German cities, I would probably have to agree with you: it did nothing to end the war sooner, and if we had lost the war, instead of winning, our military leaders would probably have been tried as war criminals. Winners make the history, after all.
But Hiroshima and Nagasaki were something quite different. Although the Japanese military forces had been thoroughly trounced by then, they did not, and would not surrender. We had two options: drop the bomb and scare them into surrender, or invade the home islands and crush them. The problem with the latter is that the Japanese people, not just the military, were preparing to fight to the death to stop us! Dropping the bomb saved thousands of American lives, and probably saved millions of Japanese lives in the long run. In my opinion the US has nothing to apologize for in those instances.