U.S. reviews 9/11 documents for possible release

[Spongebob]

I dont see how any of this is relevant to the question if dropping two nukes during war is a terrorist act.

Mind you, the USA signed the Haague convention, asking to "spare civilians, other noncombatans as well as civilian innstallations as much as possible" during a war. So, no, it wasnt "natural" to raze all major cities with firebombing raids, or dropping nukes.

As much as i hate to say it, but Goebels was correct when he labeled them "terrorbombings", because thats all those massive attacks on (german and japanese cities) were. Of course he conveniently *forgot* to mention Coventry, Amsterdam, etc.. No, sir, everybody was wrong in doing so, everybody, and they knew it.

Back on topic, as i already explained, one may consider all of this to be of "terrorist" nature, but to me the state vs (private) organisation distinction is the small but crucial one making the necessary difference between the US dropping nukes and Al Quaeda flying planes into skyscrapers: Both actions are to be condemned and maybe considered to be "terrorist" in the colloquial sense, but one at least was part of a process called "war", where everyone intended to still follow some basic rules (but in the end didnt), the other one is just some random religious fanatic schmocks deciding they shoud have the power to decide about the life and death of thousands.

An action of war has at least some minimal semblance of civilisation (and maybe a military goal to justify, like avoiding even more casualties in case of an invasion of mainland Japan) to it, but what Al Quaeda did....they can suck my dick before they go to hell as well as any member of this forum defending them.

I didn't say the US did the natural thing by bombing cities.  I said the US did the natural thing by taking the fight to Japan, going on the offensive.  There's a difference.  Once it became clear that Japan was out of its league and had no hope of winning it could have done the sensible thing and surrendered.  What, you would prefer the US just blows up a few Japanese ships, then skulks back home?

It sounds like you are in the camp that believes the nukes were terrorist attacks.  That's ridiculous.  As I already explained, it was Japan, not the US, that was beaten but refused to surrender.  So I'll ask you the same question, do you think Truman should have just invaded Japan instead?  The death toll might have been even greater and would have included thousands more Americans.  As much as the US tried to limit attacks during WW2 to military targets, the refusal of an aggressive nation (Germany and Japan) that simply won't back down when it has no hope of winning, causes you to extend attacks on non-military targets.  The bombings of Japan and Germany, conventional and otherwise, took out most of their factories and transportation systems.  This was important to end the war; end the enemy's ability to sustain war.

Bin Laden never attacked a US military target and never intended to; they were too difficult to hit and he knew killing civilians would be more terrorizing.  That's the only difference here.  The nukes were intended to end a war.  Terrorism has a much different objective.  You can't equate the two.

There's actually a lot more interesting and accurate things to criticize about American military maneuvering and I'm right up there calling much of it out.  This one is just plain stupid.