dave

I don't watch CNN, so I guess your comment is sorta irrelevant. Please refrain from being an assuming twat in the future.

In my eyes, for the U.S. government (or military) to be a terrorist organization, those as the highest levels of command need to give orders to target and execute civilians. Yes, I'm familiar with My Lai (though I've never heard of Arthur<b>t</b> Harris :P ), and yes, the actions there could definitely be considered terrorism. I didn't check Xug's links, but if I recall correctly, Calley was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison (though was released a few years later - a shame upon our military justice system). As for Arthur Harris and the firebombing of Dresden... was that not an entirely British idea? Ja, I am no <b>expert</b> on the firebombing of Dresden, but I seem to recall Harris being not American (and being in a not American military). I'm sure that's in Xug's links, or can be found with quick google searches for biographies.

I'll read more on that later and probably recant something here, 'cause I'm bound to get something wrong.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been discussed at length previously, but the short of it is that the nook-yoo-lar bombs saved both American <b>and</b> Japanese lives. Consider what a full-scale invasion of the mainland would have cost in human lives on both sides (civilian, too - the indoctrination of the Japanese civilians being the main problem here). Consider what happened on various island invastions (Okinawa, etc) and multiply it by a couple thousand.

Anyway, all that having been said, I don't believe it's SOP for U.S. military personnel to target civilians. This is not to say that civilians don't die - they do, and it's a damn shame. Unfortunately, that's the way of war.