£25 billion on upgrading Trident - why?

[Troy Tempest]

Had to dig deep to find any mention of yesterday's protest at Faslane.

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[Annie]

daftdog Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 4:53 pm Post subject:

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But with that said... any nation daft enough to attack MY country, will need to take out most of it in a single attack, as i and many like me, will defend it till the very end.

I am sure that all of us on the forum agree with your statement; however, we are talking about replacement/upgrade here. If we don't have the "new and improved," then what kind of deterrant is it really, especially to a country like Korea, who as a complete psychopathic dictator in power?

[Beachcomber]

who as a complete psychopathic dictator in power?

Precisely the sort of person against whom a deterent will be totally ineffectual.

[daftdog]

I am sure that all of us on the forum agree with your statement; however, we are talking about replacement/upgrade here. If we don't have the "new and improved," then what kind of deterrent is it really, especially to a country like Korea, who as a complete psychopathic dictator in power?

My point was, if we are going to redevelop a new weapon to replace the Trident Missile, then we have no right to DICTATE to N.Korea or any other nation who wishes to develop their own weapons.

If we were a country without nuclear weapons, would we not have the right to develop them to protect ourselves from countries that do.

However that is a mute point, as the actual upgrade is to the submarine defence system, not the actual missiles themselves. This i am all for, as there is no point having these missiles as a deterrent if we have an outdated launch system in place for them. With that said, i don't believe a nuclear weapon will ever be fired in anger from a democratic country in the civilised world and the biggest threat we face is from chemical and virus related weapons.

[Annie]

I was actually agreeing with you! The point being that it would NOT be a deterrant to an insane dictator!

Maybe I should have worded it better, sorry!

[Beachcomber]

I was actually agreeing with you! The point being that it would NOT be a deterrant to an insane dictator! Maybe I should have worded it better, sorry!

Sorry, my misinterpretation. Thankfully there aren't all that many insane dictators left in the world.

[Annie]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!

I will have to try and make a list of them - but not tonight!

Another time on another forum topic - ?????

[ionnsaigh]

daftdog,
You don't believe that a Nuclear weapon will ever be fired in anger from a Democratic country in the civilised World.

The above is a truly fine statement- however it rings false when juxtaposed with the harsh reality of history.
The United States America could be legitimately described as a Democratic and Civilised Society.
Yet on Aug 6th 1945 they committed an act of mass murder by obliterating Hiroshima Japan by Nuclear Weapons.
Enola Gay dropped (Little Boy) on the City resulting in the deaths of over 140,000 People the vast majority being Civilians.
The USA- this widely perceived bastion of Freedom Democracy and Civilisation then waited a further Three Days witnessing the utter devastation of that poor city, it's poor innocent people, before committing yet another act of inhumanity to defenseless people in the Japanese City of Nagasaki, by dropping off ( Fat Man ) which resulted in a further massacre of 74,000 innocent souls.
I find the names given to these Nuclear weapons by the Democratic country that committed such a vile and wicked act interesting. Little Boy and Fat Man. The first being not mature and yet to grow. The second grown to maturity.
These names where clearly named in conjunction with each other. In other words they where to be used, regardless of collateral damage and Moral indignation of the Civilised, to that first savage act of mass brutality.

[daftdog]

daftdog,
You don't believe that a Nuclear weapon will ever be fired in anger from a Democratic country in the civilised World.

The above is a truly fine statement- however it rings false when juxtaposed with the harsh reality of history.
The United States America could be legitimately described as a Democratic and Civilised Society.
Yet on Aug 6th 1945 they committed an act of mass murder by obliterating Hiroshima Japan by Nuclear Weapons.
Enola Gay dropped (Little Boy) on the City resulting in the deaths of over 140,000 People the vast majority being Civilians.
The USA- this widely perceived bastion of Freedom Democracy and Civilisation then waited a further Three Days witnessing the utter devastation of that poor city, it's poor innocent people, before committing yet another act of inhumanity to defenseless people in the Japanese City of Nagasaki, by dropping off ( Fat Man ) which resulted in a further massacre of 74,000 innocent souls.
I find the names given to these Nuclear weapons by the Democratic country that committed such a vile and wicked act interesting. Little Boy and Fat Man. The first being not mature and yet to grow. The second grown to maturity.
These names where clearly named in conjunction with each other. In other words they where to be used, regardless of collateral damage and Moral indignation of the Civilised, to that first savage act of mass brutality.

I think you will understand that very occasion is the reason why i believe that a Nuclear weapon will never be fired in anger from a Democratic country in the civilised World. Now we have counties with the capabilities to defend themselves with the same weapons, where as in 1945 Japan did not have these weapons to return towards the U S of A, if they did have, the USA would not have fired upon them for fear of retaliation.

For you to suggest i am dumb enough to not know about the second world war and its atrocities and pick holes in my statement, when it was obviously referring to weapons use here, now and in the future is petty and a waste of your precious time.

[ionnsaigh]

daftog
Why bomb Twice then that is Two not One.

[daftdog]

daftog
Why bomb Twice then that is Two not One.

Because they could. Plain and simple. USA had the weapons to devastate Japan. Japan had an Air force.

In all honesty, the US didn't have the satellite capabilities and intelligence agencies they have today, so they probably thought at the time that the second one was necessary to make the point that they could not be beaten. If they had better intelligence at the time, they would have realised that after the first strike, it was game over.

Right or wrong, it ended the war in which the two nations were involved. These bombs being deployed were not a first strike, they were deployed in retaliation. Killing just over 200,000 if your figures are correct. Compare that to the persecution of the Jews by Hitler and the two bombings don't even compare (although the Japanese would disagree, as it was their countrymen) and i dare say, if these events hadn't happened there would have been more than 200,000 lives lost before the war had ended.

Today, this is the reason these weapons will not be used by the civilised world in anger, unless it is in retaliation to an attack of the same nature.

Why you wanted to drag me into this line of questioning is a puzzle to me, but one i am happy to put my point and opinion to.

[ionnsaigh]

daftdog,
So they used Weapons of Mass Destruction Not once but twice to make a point that they could not be beaten, and that they hadn't the satellite capability of today so couldn't realistically judge the horror of the first Nuclear Strike.
As far as the capabilities of their intelligence is concerned - didn't they say something about Iraqi WMD quite recently?. To say that it ended the war is not unsurprising- a view shared and propagated, rubber stamped and manipulated by the mass murderers propaganda machine. Lies lies and more lies, the truth becomes a mere form of News-speak. Yet you go on to say that these massacres where deployed in retaliation, that is impossible you can only retaliate like with like, this clearly contradicts your and their equation.

Dragging you into this line of questioning is an unusual way to describe what is after all the very nature of the Forum.

[Wee Toon Ajax]

Ionnsaigh

Its all very well with hindsight to talk about the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as mass murder etc but we are speaking of a time that the World truely was at war. The war in Europe had finished in April 1945 but the war in the Far East was still raging on with the planned invasion of Japan to take place in November 1945 at the earliest – this would have meant months more fighting in the Far East resulting in the deaths of both troops on all sides and probably many civilians too. Even the planned invasion in November was not expected to be something lasting 1 or 2 weeks.

If you have any idea of history then do you honestly think that the Japanese were going to surrender once the Allied forces landed in their country, not a chance in hell of that happening. An invasion of that country would have resulted in an untold amount of deaths and a war possibly ongoing for a few more years. Indeed one of the reasons that the atomic bombs were dropped was that initial expectations amongst the Allied leaders that troop casualties in an invasion of Japan would have been anywhere between 1 to 4 million and that is not including the Japansese deaths both in the military and civilian population, a civilian population which at the time was being trained up as militias in the event of an invasion.

Even after the dropping of the 2 bombs and the Russian invasion of Manchuria it took the Japanese nearly a week to surrender and it was actually the Emperor himself who announced the surrender, an unheard of step in that country at the time. After the first bomb the Japanese government had no intention of surrendering, jeez even after the second bomb went off there was still those among the Japanese military who were willing to fight on despite knowing that it was their civilian population that would suffer the consequences of further bombing – the bombs didn’t scare the Japanese but the threat of the Russians controlling their country certainly did. This is when your hero Uncle Joe would probably have taken a fearful revenge on the Japanese but to you that would probably be justified because it wasn’t the big bad Americans who did the killing.

If nothing else the dropping of the bombs at least showed the World the horrors that could be unleashed using these weapons and thankfully since then they have never ever been used. The war in the Far East was in many ways more brutal than that fought in Europe if that was possible and I find it amazing that you can overlook the treatment meted out by the Japanese military to Allied POWs, local populations in Burma etc – the Japanese were no friggin angels either when it came to committing mass murder.

In fact as a reasonably intelligent human being I find your slant on history and the world in general quite insulting – do you honestly think that because Campbeltown is actually the most remote place in the UK that those of us who come from the place actually don’t have a clue about the World or how it has been fashioned.

Time and time again on this forum you have managed to skew an intelligent discussion to suit your own pathetic twisted means – if you really hate the West and America so much I would quite gladly pay for a ticket to send you one way to one of the few remaining Communist states left in the world such as North Korea, Cuba etc and see how much you enjoy it. In fact I am sure there quite a few on here who would willingly pay.

[bill]

Wee Toon Ajax

Very well put.

Can't find fault with any of your post,as I am sure 99.9% of this forum would agree.

[Sweltered]

Gonyersel Weetoon Ajax. I wish I had your patience! Send him to Cuba, I'll wave tae him from the deck of the decadent cruiship as I sail past.

I was going post something similar (though not as eloquent) but I'm glad I didn't.