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During a speech, which President Obama had rendered on 01 September 2013, he had expressed indignation and outrage at the human tragedy in Syria. Alleging that the Syrian Government was responsible for the use of chemical weapons on residents on the outskirts of Damascus on 21 August 2013, Obama had then declared to the world that, “This attack is an assault on human dignity…. It risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.”[1] Later, addressing a press conference during the G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg on 06 September 2013, he said:

“I want people to understand that gassing innocent people, delivering chemical weapons against children is not something we do. It’s prohibited in active wars between countries. We certainly don’t do it against kids. And we’ve got to stand up for that principle.” [2]

The U.S. has not targeted kids! Who do you think you are kidding, Mr. President? Why do you apply double standards in judging crimes against humanity? How are the atrocities being committed in Syria any different from the carnage that the U.S. Administration has been committing for years? How could you possibly feign ignorance about the excruciating death and suffering that the U.S. Administration had inflicted on children as well as non-combatant adults especially in Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya?

Therefore, it was evident that Obama’s expression of concern was not genuine but a contrived one and that he was merely shedding crocodile tears. Obama was after all not speaking for the people of the United States, who had elected him, but for the behemoth known as the Pentagon, which is the de facto seat of power in the U.S. representing the interests of the U.S. elites, including the Zionist lobby, and which exercises ultimate control over all crucial policies of the U.S. Administration.

Appalling Legacy

In a televised national address to U.S. citizens on 10 September 2013, President Obama had further commented that, “When dictators commit atrocities, they depend upon the world to look the other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory.” [3] That assessment is very true indeed! In the case of the U.S. establishment, the only difference was that for decades it has been effectively maneuvering “the world to look the other way” by either whitewashing war crimes or hoping that the atrocities it has been committing passes off unnoticed by the rest of the world. Successive U.S. Administrations may have succeeded in obfuscating the truth by exercising disproportionate control over the global media. However, wiping off the U.S. Administration’s bloody past from the collective memory of the victims and their progenies, and from the conscience of concerned persons, who have been fighting for justice on behalf of those victims, was not very easy. The disastrous effects of the use of nuclear and chemical weapons by the U.S. leadership have caused not only widespread fatalities and devastation but also the long-term impacts of those lethal weapons are persisting to this day. Moreover, with the advent of the Internet, it has become increasingly difficult to suppress the truth from U.S. citizens and those elsewhere. Graphic accounts of the crimes committed by the U.S. establishment against humanity are not only readily available on the Internet but also the veracity of the same can now be crosschecked from various sources. The links to some of the websites and other sources that provide relevant information and analyses in this regard are given below. [See en.4]

The irony is that it is not only the targeted adversaries of the U.S. Administration who became victims of such ruthless use of nuclear and chemical weapons but also many U.S. military personnel were exposed to their pernicious effects either during the process of testing of such weapons or in the process of their employment. A large number of U.S. military personnel, indeed, were used as guinea pigs to test the effects of nuclear and chemical weapons. According to Dr. Benjamin Spock, a well-known U.S. pediatrician and anti-war activist of the 20th century:

“From 1945 through the early 1960s, some 300,000 men and women in U.S. uniform were exposed to radiation from atmospheric, underwater, and underground bomb tests. The military wanted to know how armies would react to atomic weaponry in war and they used American soldiers to find out.” [5]

In addition, a CBS News Report dated 11 February 2009 has revealed that:

“The Pentagon is continuing to withhold documents on Cold War chemical and biological weapons tests that used unsuspecting sailors as “human samplers”…. Project 112 and the Shipboard Hazard and Defense Project consisted of 50 tests conducted between 1962 and 1973. The tests were conducted in Alaska, Maryland, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Utah, Panama, Canada and Britain and aboard ships in the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans…. The secretive tests involved 5,842 soldiers and sailors — many of whom were unwitting guinea pigs. The experiments were designed to determine the effectiveness of biological and chemical agents in combat and methods to protect troops from attacks. An untold number of civilians also may have been exposed during some of the tests on the troops.” [6]

There is more to the story. The cruel fate of thousands of U.S. war-veterans, who were exposed to highly toxic dioxin in Vietnam and to depleted uranium dust in Iraq, provide ample testimony to the grievous suffering that the U.S. military had inflicted on the people of Vietnam (during 1961-1971) and Iraq (in 1991, 1998, 2003 & 2004) by using chemical and radiological weapons respectively. The valiant struggles that U.S. war-veterans – as victims of nuclear and chemical warfare – have been waging to seek justice from the U.S. Administration give a fair idea of the magnitude of the problem. The links to some of the websites that provide the relevant information in this regard are given below. [See en.7]

Despite such overwhelming evidence about the numerous crimes committed by the U.S. Administration against humanity, the U.S. President still believes that he is capable of making “the world to look the other way” away from the ground realities by prying into the thought processes of other governments and selected individuals the world over. There is nothing personal about President Obama’s attempts to fabricate, conceal or distort the truth: it is an indelible trait, which is inbuilt into the economic, social and political value system he represents. As Gary Younge of the Guardian has noted:

“It [the U.S.] acquired it [power], as do all empires, in no small part through war, invasion, subterfuge and exploitation. Spying and lying about it comes with the job description for which Obama applied and was reappointed…. When given the choice of representing the interests of those who voted for him and the interests of American military and economic hegemony, he chose the latter.” [8]

Even a cursory glance at the history of the United States especially since the sudden demise of President Franklin Roosevelt on 12 April 1945 would show how several of his successors in office have misled U.S. citizens and the rest of the world about USA’s repeated use of weapons of mass destruction on innocent non-combatants. The insidious tactics that the U.S. Administration has adopted for systematically covering up the facts regarding heinous acts that the U.S. has been committing or regarding questionable policies that the U.S espouses is by indulging in doublespeak. On the one hand, it makes concerted attempts to portray itself as the paragon of virtue, which upholds “universal values” by fervently opposing “crimes against humanity” while depicting its adversaries as the “axis of evil”, which are nothing but “outposts of tyranny”.

On the other hand, it leaves no stone unturned to pass-off outright lies and half-truths as the whole and unmitigated truth and also has no compunctions in making value judgments by applying one set of standards for itself & its allies and an entirely different set of standards for those who are perceived as its adversaries. A few anecdotes from history – beginning with the decision to use atom bombs on Japan – would substantiate these observations. For a more coherent understanding of the debate and for placing it in the proper perspective, it is necessary to present some background information on the chain of events that are related to that debate.

Atom Bomb Project

It may be recalled that the atom-bomb project was initiated in the U.S. only after the noted scientist, Albert Einstein, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt on 02 August 1939. Einstein was urged to do so by other scientists like Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi, who too had escaped to the U.S. from the Nazi and Fascist onslaught in Europe and who had managed to obtain critical information regarding advances being made in Germany in this field from the noted Danish Physicist, Niels Bohr. Bohr, who had arrived in the U.S. on a three-month teaching assignment in January 1939, was informed about the breakthrough that the German physicists had achieved in splitting the atom and about its momentous significance just before he had set sail from Europe. Although Einstein’s letter was handed over to President Roosevelt through his friend Alexander Sachs on 11 September 1939 and the President had authorized the setting up of an Advisory Committee on Uranium immediate thereafter, the project actually took shape only after the U.S. had entered the Second World War following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour on 07 December 1941.

The guiding spirit behind the atom bomb project (code-named “Manhattan Project”) was Niels Bohr, who had escaped to Britain in 1943 after his arrest in Nazis occupied Denmark became imminent. Bohr came to the U.S. as part of the British team to jointly work on the project after a collaboration agreement between the two sided was signed in this regard. Bohr was also the first scientist to express concern at the political problems that was likely to arise because of the discovery of the new weapon. To forestall a competition between allied nations for building nuclear weapons, Bohr felt that an agreement between the principal powers – U.K, USA & USSR – on control and use of atomic energy was essential before completion of the atom bomb or its actual employment in war. Bohr was of the view that, as a first step, the USSR, which had made significant advances in the field of nuclear physics, should be taken into confidence. Although President Roosevelt and his advisors broadly supported Bohr’s proposal, Bohr was directed to discuss the matter with the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. To Bohr’s utter dismay, Churchill was infuriated at the very idea.

However, Bohr did not give up hope. He wrote a seven-page memorandum on 03 July 1944 addressed to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill highlighting that: “…an initiative, aiming at forestalling a fateful competition, should serve to uproot any cause of distrust between the powers on whose harmonious collaboration the fate of coming generations will depend.” [9] Soon afterwards, on 26 August 1944, Roosevelt invited Bohr to discuss the memorandum – a discussion that turned out to be very fruitful. Roosevelt agreed to raise the matter with Churchill at their forthcoming meeting in Quebec on 19 September 1944. However, at the Quebec meeting, Churchill poisoned Roosevelt’s ears by almost alleging that Bohr in all probability was a Soviet agent because of which Bohr’s proposal fell through. Thus, according to Ruth Moore, one of Bohr’s biographers:

“It can only be said that when his counsel of fruitful international cooperation was rejected, primarily through the agency of one man – Winston Churchill – exactly the dangers Bohr had foreseen did come to pass.”[10]

Meanwhile, towards the end of 1944, the Allied armies were closing in on Germany from all sides. Italian fascists had already capitulated and Japan too was on the retreat from all the areas it had occupied in South-East Asia. With the fall of Strassburg on 25 November 1944 on the Western Front and with the arrest of many of the top German physicists from the laboratories attached to the university there, it was evident from the research papers found in their possession that Germany was far behind the Allies in atomic research. When this amazing information reached the scientists on the Manhattan Project, they realized that the assumption on which they had started work was no longer valid. Therefore, Leo Szilard again approached Einstein this time with a request that he should use his influence to prevent the United States, which was on the verge of acquiring atomic weapons, from holding out threats to other nations. Einstein again concurred with Szilard’s apprehension and accordingly sent another letter to President Roosevelt on 25 March 1945 along with Szilard’s note against employment of the atom bomb against Japan, which was on the verge of surrender. Unfortunately, Einstein’s letter and Szilard’s memorandum were still on President Roosevelt’s desk unopened, when on 12 April 1945, Roosevelt suddenly passed away.

Tussle Within Democratic Party

It may also be recalled that there was keen tussle for the post of Vice-President at the 1944 Democratic Party Convention for the impending presidential elections in the U.S. since it was evident that President Roosevelt, who was being nominated for the post of President for the fourth time, would not last his full term due to failing health. The right-wingers in the Democratic Party were intent on preventing the incumbent Vice-President, Henry Wallace – a liberal democrat – from continuing in the post because of his progressive outlook. Since the leader of the rightwing, James Byrnes, who was a Southerner (essentially a covert White Supremacist) and had little chance of being nominated to the post, Byrnes engineered a compromise and succeeded in securing the nomination of Harry Truman (who was supposedly not a Southerner but a close confidant of Byrnes nevertheless) to the post. Thus, to humanity’s misfortune, it was Harry Truman – an archconservative and warmonger, who was nominated to the post and who emerged as the successor to President Roosevelt.

One of President Truman’s first moves was to appoint his mentor, James Byrnes, as the U.S. Secretary of State, i.e., as the key architect of U.S. foreign policy. Byrnes, as the most prominent right-winger in the Democratic Party, was privy to the work on the atomic bomb project. Accordingly, Byrnes shared the secret with President Truman soon after he assumed office. Truman was overjoyed by the knowledge that “…the bomb might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war.” [11] The result of such pernicious thoughts was that it emboldened the U.S. Administration to pursue an aggressive foreign policy.

Thus, contrary to expectations, after the surrender of Germany on 08 May 1945, the work on the Manhattan Project was actually speeded up. However, since the threat from Germany had ceased, scientists on the Manhattan Project were greatly perturbed by the ultimate outcome of their work. In a desperate attempt to prevent the U.S. from using the atomic bomb on Japan, Leo Szilard – after a lot of effort – met James Byrnes on 28 May 1945. From the outcome of the meeting, it was evident that the U.S. Administration was intent on taking a hawkish stance. However, sensing the defiant mood of the scientists, the University of Chicago, which was one of three main centres where research for the Manhattan Project were being carried out, was forced to appoint a committee to discuss and report in detail upon the ‘Social and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy’. The Report of the Committee, which was headed by James Franck – one of the senior most scientists on the Manhattan Project, was immediately forwarded to the U.S. Secretary of War on 11 June 1945. From hindsight, it is apparent that the U.S. Administration never took the Franck Report seriously.

The belligerent attitude of the U.S. Administration was also apparent from the contempt with which it chose to treat the United Nations. It may be noted that the very purpose of founding the United Nations Organization was to prevent aggression and war. This objective was reflected in the UN Charter, which was drawn up by the 46 Allied-nations (led by UK, USSR and USA) that had successfully fought against the Axis powers (led by Germany, Italy and Japan). After the Allied nations had adopted the Charter at the San Francisco Conference on 26 June 1945, the U.S. Senate ratified the decision on 28 July 1945 and the U.S. became the first nation to join the UN. However, the U.S. also became the first nation to blatantly violate the basic aim enshrined in the UN Charter, namely “to save succeeding generation from the scourge of war”. Within nine days of joining the UN, the U.S. carried out its atomic bomb attack on 06 August 1945 on Japan, a nation on the verge of surrender.

Untenable Justification

The effects of the atomic attack were staggering. The total area demolished by the blast and the fire in the targeted cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 13 sq km and 6.7 sq km respectively. Of the estimated 350,000 people in Hiroshima on 06 August 1945, over 200,000 perished by October 1950. In Nagasaki, of the estimated 270,000 people in the city on 09 August 1945, 140,000 met a similar fate. Moreover, radiation related deaths are continuing to this day.[4b] This mindless act was a shattering blow to the high expectations of all war-weary peoples of a peaceful post-war world held out by the formation of the UN. Strange as it may seem, the UN General Assembly to date has never taken the U.S. to task for daring to violate the tenets of the UN Charter and committing that heinous crime.

For somehow justifying its dastardly decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan and for misleading the world at large, the U.S. Administration unleashed a concerted disinformation campaign. As early as 10 August 1945, President Truman in an address to U.S. citizens said: “Having found the [atom] bomb, we have used it…. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of the war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”[12]

That there was not an iota of truth in Truman’s statement is evident from the considered comments of several of his contemporaries – both senior politicians as well as top military officers, who were well aware of the ground realities at that time. Among them are Winston Churchill (Prime Minister of Britain, 1940 to 1945); Fleet Admiral W.D. Leahy (Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman successively, 1942 to 1949); General Dwight Eisenhower (Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Western Europe, 1943 to 1945 & U.S. President, 1953 to 1960); and General Douglas MacArthur (Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Southwest Pacific Area, 1942-1945. Churchill, who despite being an archconservative, has categorically stated that:

“It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bombs. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell and was brought about by overwhelming maritime power.” [13]

Fleet Admiral Leahy, the topmost U.S military officer then, was unrelenting in his criticism of the decision to use atomic bombs on Japan. He has forthrightly stated that:

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons… My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and that wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”[14]

In July 1945, when the U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, during his visit to the Allied Headquarters in Europe, had informed General Eisenhower that the U.S. Administration was preparing to drop an atom bomb on Japan, Eisenhower too had strongly opposed the decision. Recounting his reactions in his memoires, Eisenhower wrote:

“I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act…. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and second because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.'”[15]

Moreover, in preparation for invasion of Japan, as per the U.S. military operational plans, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, was made commander in chief of all U.S. Army and Air Force units in the Pacific in April 1945. Even as part of the normal decision-making process, the U.S. Administration should have consulted its area commander whether it was necessary to use atomic bombs to force Japan to surrender. But no such consultation ever took place. According one of General MacArthur’s biographers:

“Actually the General felt that the use of atomic weapons at that stage ‘was completely unnecessary from a military point of view’ to compel Japan’s capitulation and said so on several occasions in later years. He was also offended that the Allied leaders had not consulted him prior to the issuance of the Potsdam Declaration…” [16]

In fact, General MacArthur, in his reminiscences, has categorically stated that:

“As the end of the Philippines campaign approached [June 1945] plans were considered at my headquarters regarding the future of the war. Captured documents revealed a fatal degree of exhaustion of Japan’s heavy and armaments industries…. My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the verge of collapse and surrender. I even directed that plans be drawn ‘for a possible peaceful occupation’ without further military operations.”[17]

Distortion of History

Nevertheless, President Truman’s unabashed lie, which was widely and systematically propagated through history textbooks and the media, have instilled the common belief among a good section of people across the world, particularly in the U.S., that atom bombs were used on Japan because there were no other recourse for forcing Japan to surrender and end World War–II. Despite an enormous amount of irrefutable evidence to the contrary, on the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing, President Ronald Regan repeated the falsehood yet again when he said:

“We dropped the [atom] bomb in an effort to end what had been the greatest war in man’s history…. The casualties were estimated at more than a million if we continued. And I think to second-guess now those who had to make that awesome decision is ridiculous.” [18]

The huge controversy that erupted over the exhibition, which was to be mounted at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing, graphically illustrates the level of intolerance of the U.S. establishment towards historical truths. According to a report published in The Baltimore Times titled ‘Smithsonian cancels exhibit on atomic bomb’, it was noted that:

“Bowing to pressure from veteran’s organizations and members of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution agreed yesterday to junk its upcoming exhibit on the atomic bombings of Japan and instead mount a simple display of the B-29 Enola Gay at the National Air and Space Museum. Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman said in a news conference in Washington that ‘we made a basic error in attempting to couple an historical treatment of the use of atomic weapons with the 50th anniversary commemoration of the end of the war.’ Mr. Heyman… said museum officials failed to anticipate fully the strong reaction of World War II veterans, many of whom believe the atomic bombings saved their lives by shortening the war”. [19]

The said news report, quoting another official, said, “…THERE WILL ALSO BE NO GRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHS OF BOMB DESTRUCTION OR INJURED PEOPLE, WHICH THE “LAST ACT” SCRIPT DID INCLUDE.” (Emphasis added) Shortly afterwards, in May 1995, the Director of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Martin Harwitt, who was instrumental in conceiving the original exhibition, was forced to resign. [20] This panic reaction from the side of the U.S. establishment more than proves that it is literally scared of sharing with U.S. citizens facts pertaining to war crimes committed under its directions. Under the circumstances, the utter hollowness of President Obama’s claim that “We certainly don’t do it against kids” [2] stands completely exposed.

According to some recent reports, this barefaced tradition in the U.S. of distorting history is going on unabated. In an article titled “The Problem with America’s History Books” Oliver Stone (film director) and Peter Kuznick (historian) have tried to outline the gravity of the issue, which the authors had described in their reportedly outstanding – thoroughly researched and rigorously analyzed – book titled “The Untold History of the United States” (2012). According to Stone and Kuznick:

“In terms of history education, we face two basic problems. First, as the Nation’s Report Card indicates, students know very little history. Second, much of what they do learn is extremely partial or flat out wrong. Take, for example, the discussion of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in one popular high school text–The American Past by Joseph Conlin…. In the few brief paragraphs devoted to the atomic bombings, which the Newseum’s 1999 panel of experts declared the most important news event of the 20th century, Conlin manages to twice repeat the falsehood that the bombs were used to avoid one million U.S. casualties in an invasion, that Japanese fanaticism was “impossible to overstate,” and that the bombs ended the war. Such complete ignorance or willful dismissal of contemporary scholarship on the topic is unconscionable.” [21]

Stone and Kuznick also observed that:

“People ignorant of the real facts of history fill the vacuum with either a fancifully corrupt view or a mythic one. In the United States that usually takes the form of a comforting fairy tale of American exceptionalism — the notion that unique among nations, the U.S. is motivated by altruistic benevolence, generosity, and the desire to spread freedom and democracy.” [22]

Out of the compulsion to cover its reprehensible track-record and to project the United States in favorable light, U.S. Presidents are compelled to speak with a forked tongue. As Daniel Ellsberg, who was instrumental in unraveling the Pentagon Papers in 1971, has correctly observed:

“The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers…. The fact is, Presidents rarely say the whole truth, essentially never say the whole truth of what they expect and what they’re doing and what they believe, why they’re doing it. And rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters. It’s simply more convenient and more politically effective, they feel, for them to present matters to the public in a way that happens not to correspond to reality.” [23]

Thus, President Obama is no different: he is merely following that ‘hallowed’ tradition!

[To be continued]

N.D. Jayaprakash is Joint Secretary, Delhi Science Forum. He can be reached at jaypdsf@gmail.com

REFERENCES:

[1] See: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/31/statement-president-syria

[2] See: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/06/remarks-president-obama-press-conference-g20

[3] http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/10/remarks-president-address-nation-syria

[4] (a) http://www.fogonazos.es/2007/02/hiroshima-pictures-they-didnt-want-us_05.html

(b) The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atom Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombing”, Basic Books Inc., New York, 1981.

(c) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/26/agent-orange-victims_n_3818562.html,

(d) http://cnnphotos.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/30/effects-of-agent-orange-ongoing-silently-in-children/

(e) https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/09/chemical-warfare-at-its-worst/

(f) http://childvictimsofwar.org.uk/get-informed/uranium-weapons/

(g) “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009”, http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828

[5] In his introduction to “Killing Our Own: Chronicling the Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, 1945-1982” by Harvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon, Dell Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1982. See: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/Intro.html & http://www.angelfire.com/tx/atomicveteran/

[6] See: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/01/national/main561218.shtml

[7] See:

(a) website of Vietnam Veterans of America at:

http://www.vva.org/Committees/AgentOrange/

(b) Website of Veterans Today at:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/category/medical-and-health/agent-orange/

(c) Website of Children of Vietnam Veterans at: http://covvha.net/children-of-vietnam-veterans-health-alliance-surviving-agent-orange-and-dioxin-exposures/#.UjQZDH85odw

(d) Website of American Gulf War Veterans Association at:

http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du.htm

[8] See: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/21/obama-worse-than-bush#

[9] Robert Jungk, “Brighter Than A Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists”, Harcourt Brace & World, Inc., New York, 1958, pp.332-334

[10] Ruth Moore, “Niels Bhor: The Man and the Scientist”, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1967, p.3.

[11] Harry S. Truman, “Memoirs Vol.I: Years of Decisions”, Doubleday & Company Inc., New York, 1955, p.87

[12] “The Atomic Age Opens”, ed. by Donald Porter Geddes, The World Publishing Company, New York, 1945, p.41

[13] Winston S. Churchill, “The Second World War – Vol. VI: Triumph and Tragedy”, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1953, p.646

[14] W.D. Leahy, “I Was There: The Personal History of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman”, Victor Gollencz Ltd., London, 1950, p.429

[15] Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Mandate for Change: 1953-1956”, Doubleday & Company Inc., New York, 1963, pp.312-313

[16] D. Clayton James, “The Years of MacArthur – 1941-1945”, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1975, p.775

[17] Douglas MacArthur, “Reminiscences”, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1964, p.260.

For more detailed explanations, see: N.D.Jayaprakash, “The Meaning of Hiroshima Nagasaki: the decision to use atomic bombs on Japan & its implications for humankind”, Delhi Science Forum-Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad, Delhi, 1990 (LC Control Number 2007394957)

[18] Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session with Reporters

05 August 1985 at: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/80585a.htm

[19] 31 January 1995 at: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-01-31/features/1995031159_1_heyman-atomic-enola-gay

[20] See: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/30/movies/television-view-fifty-years-later-still-the-day-after.html (30 July 1995)

[21] See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-stone/the-problem-with-america-history_b_2059593.html (01 November 2012)

[22] Ibid

[23] See: Harry Kreisler, “Presidential Decisions and Public Dissent: Conversations with Daniel Ellsberg”, 29 July 1998, at:

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Ellsberg/ellsberg98-2.html