heal this

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0815-06.htm

Published on Friday, August 15, 2003 by John Pilger

August Marks Another Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing of Japan, the
Ultimate Act of Terrorism in Which 231,920 People Have Now Died,
the Latest, the Children of 1945, from a Plague of Cancers

by John Pilger

I first visited Hiroshima 22 years after the atomic bombing. Although
the
city had been completely rebuilt with glass boxes and ring roads, its
suffering was not difficult to find. Beside the river, less than a mile
from
where the bomb burst, stilts of shacks rose from the silt, and languid
human
silhouettes searched pyramids of rubbish, providing a glimpse of a Japan
few
can now imagine.

They were the survivors. Most of them were sick, impoverished,
unemployed
and socially excluded. Such was the fear of the "atomic plague" that
people
changed their names; most moved away. The sick received treatment in a
crowded state-run hospital. The modern Atomic Bomb Hospital, surrounded
by
pines and overlooking the city, which the Americans built and ran, took
only
a few patients for "study".

On 6 August, the anniversary of the bombing, the Mainichi Shimbun
reported
that the number of people killed directly and after exposure to
radiation
had now reached 231,920. Today, in the same hospital wards I visited,
there
are the children of 1945, dying from a predictable plague of cancers.

The first Allied journalist to reach Hiroshima following the bombing was

Wilfred Burchett, the Australian war correspondent of the London Daily
Express. Burchett found thousands of survivors suffering mysterious
symptoms
of internal hemorrhage, spotted skin and hair loss. In a historic
despatch
to the Express that began, "I write this as a warning to the world", he
described the effects of radiation.

The Allied occupation authorities vehemently denied Burchett's reports.
People had died only as a result of the blast, they lied, and the
"embedded"
Allied press amplified this. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" was
the
headline in the New York Times of 13 September 1945. Burchett had his
press
accreditation withdrawn and was issued with an expulsion order from
Japan,
which was later rescinded. Japanese film shot in the hospitals was
confiscated and sent to Washington, where it was classified as top
secret
and not released for 23 years.

The true motive for using this ultimate weapon of mass destruction was
suppressed even longer. The official truth was that the bomb was dropped
to
speed the surrender of Japan and save Allied lives. Today, as the public

becomes more attuned to the scale of government deception, this was
probably
the biggest lie of all. As the historian Gar Alperovitz, among others,
has
documented, US political and military leaders, knowing that Japan's
surrender was already under way, believed the atomic bombing was
militarily
unnecessary. In 1946 the US Strategic Bombing Survey confirmed this.
None of
this was shared with the public, nor the belief in Washington that the
atomic bomb "experiment" in Japan, as President Truman put it, would
demonstrate US primacy to the Russians.

Since then declassified files have shown that the United States has
almost
used nuclear weapons on at least three occasions: twice in the 1950s,
during
the Korean war and in Indo-China (against Ho Chi Minh's forces, which
were
then routing the French), and during the 1973 Arab/Israeli war. During
the
1980s, President Reagan threatened the use of "limited" nuclear weapons,

until huge demonstrations in Europe curtailed the American short-range
missile program. Under George W Bush's essentially Reaganite
administration,
the US (and British) military's love affair with nuclear weapons is on
the
rise again. In 2001, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, the landmark agreement with the Russians signed in 1972.

This was the first time in the nuclear era that Washington had renounced
a
major arms control accord.

The most important official behind this is John Bolton, the
under-secretary
of state for arms control and international security: an ironic title,
surely, given the extraordinary stand Bolton has taken and the threats
he
has made. A former Reagan man who is probably the most extreme of George
W
Bush's "neo-cons", Bolton had his appointment endorsed by Senator Jesse
Helms, one of America's greatest warmongers, with these words: "John
Bolton
is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon...for
the
final battle between good and evil."

Bolton is Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's man at the "liberal" State
Department. He is a strong advocate of the blurring of the distinction
between nuclear and conventional weapons. This is described vividly in
last
year's leaked Nuclear Posture Review, in which the Pentagon expresses
its
"need" for low-yield nuclear weapons for possible attacks on a shopping
list
of "enemies of the United States": Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq and North
Korea.
The inclusion of Iraq is significant. During the long charade about
Saddam
Hussein's elusive weapons of mass destruction, no mention was made in
Washington of US willingness to use nuclear weapons against Iraq. It was

left to Britain's Defense Secretary, the caustic Geoff Hoon, to disclose

this. On 26 March 2002, Hoon told parliament that "some states" - he
mentioned Saddam Hussein by name - "can be absolutely confident that in
the
right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons". No
British
minister has ever made such an outright threat. As Hoon himself later
admitted, British policy is merely an extension of US policy.

As for John Bolton, there is little doubt that he has been assigned to
lead
the charge against North Korea, which has nuclear weapons. Bolton has
been
traveling the world trying to assemble a "coalition" that will send
warships
to "interdict" North Korean vessels. Two weeks ago he was in Seoul,
where he
unleashed a remarkable stream of abuse against the North Korean dictator
Kim
Jong-il who, he said, ran "a hellish nightmare". (In reply, Pyongyang
described Bolton as "human scum".)

Last month I interviewed Bolton in Washington and asked him: "If you
stop
ships, isn't there an echo of what happened in 1962, with the threat of
nuclear war? Won't the North Korean regime be moved to defend themselves

with the nuclear weapons they have?" He replied that a North Korean ship
had
already been stopped and "the regime did nothing in response".

"But if you take action, the nuclear risk is there, isn't it?" I asked.
He
replied, "The risk is there if we don't take action... of them
blackmailing
other countries." He quoted Condoleezza Rice, Bush's closest adviser:
"We
don't want to wait for the mushroom cloud."

Two weeks ago, on the 58th anniversary of Hiroshima's incineration, a
secret
conference was held at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska, the

base where, 24 hours a day, the United States keeps its "nuclear vigil".
(It
was the setting for Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove.) In attendance
were
cabinet members, generals and leading scientists from America's three
main
nuclear weapons laboratories. Members of Congress were banned, even as
observers. The agenda was the development of "mini-nukes" for possible
use
against "rogue states".

The mantle of the greatest rogue state of all cannot be in doubt. Since
the
end of the cold war, the United States has repudiated, rejected or
subverted
all the major treaties designed to prevent war with weapons of mass
destruction, especially nuclear weapons. This is the rampant power to
which,
says Hoon, we are inexorably tied.

That, not an establishment brawl between the government and the BBC,
ought
to be our most urgent concern.

� CARLTON INTERACTIVE 2000/JOHN PILGER
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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