Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
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.

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.
Why cities? Why not military targets?