Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Wed 05/28/2025 View Tue 05/27/2025 View Mon 05/26/2025 View Sun 05/25/2025 View Sat 05/24/2025 View Fri 05/23/2025 View Thu 05/22/2025
2016-05-29 -Short Attention Span Theater-
Brian Williams: U.S. Is ‘The Only Nation to Have Used’ Nuclear Weapons ‘In Anger’
In anger? Rather as a matter of cold calculation, you sad inheritor of a once-serious profession.
[NEWSBUSTERS.ORG] MSNBC breaking news host and ex-NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was allowed out on MSNBC’s airwaves early Friday afternoon to discuss President B.O.’s visit to Hiroshima so he could resurrect a taped report that aired in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of the nuclear bomb’s dropping on the Japanese city.

In the course of discussing the event afterward, though, Williams threw some shade in the direction of the U.S. military and then-President Harry Truman by complaining that "we’re the only nation to have used them in anger" against the horrifying Axis Powers member.

Leading up to that, Mitchell pointed out that the current President has shown an interest in nuclear disarmament since he took office but lamented has made little progress since the most recent conference in D.C. "because Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
 -- the other great nuclear power and the other curb on proliferation after the Cold War was the Soviet Union wasn’t present, was boycotting because of other tensions, tensions over Ukraine."

NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss compared the President’s Hiroshima speech to that of "John Kennedy at the American University -- so close to where we are now in 1963 and that was given with the same motive which was that was a time when talks about a test-ban treaty had been installed."

Asked by Mitchell to comment on the push by then-Senators Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to curb the use of nuclear material, Williams initially praised them, but then took a swipe at the entire reason that Truman had the bombs dropped (which was to end the war):

It is and that is still the threat that people worry about that this material will fall into the wrong hands. If people have found the U.S. to be preachy in the years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki about the use of weapons, it’s because we’re the only nation to have used them in anger. Sometimes, I am amazed that the world has been without these weapons all the years since, but it is a point of, a great pride by the people who have seen to it.

Of course, Williams has a past on this issue (as he does on most things -- including lying) going back to 2005 when, in addition to the taped piece, he pressed Enola Gay pilot Dutch Van Kirk on whether or not he has "remorse for what happened" and how he "deal[s] with" the bomb’s dropping psychologically.
Posted by Fred 2016-05-29 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11135 views ]  Top

#1 the only nation to have used them in anger
Certainly they were used in time of war perhaps not in anger but in hope.

The two bombings killed tens of thousands.
The resultant actions saved perhaps millions of lives of the alternative Allied invasion forces.
Posted by Skidmark 2016-05-29 01:29||   2016-05-29 01:29|| Front Page Top

#2 Bran, of course knows all about the decisions leading up to the use of the bomb. After all he was there!
Posted by CrazyFool 2016-05-29 02:11||   2016-05-29 02:11|| Front Page Top

#3 Hey, Brian, you forgot, they nuked New Mexico first.
Posted by Procopius2k 2016-05-29 08:53||   2016-05-29 08:53|| Front Page Top

#4 It is sad how Williams' groundbreaking interview with Truman just after the bombing has been forgotten.
Posted by whitecollar redneck 2016-05-29 10:57||   2016-05-29 10:57|| Front Page Top

#5 War is fought in anger. We did not storm Normandy beach listening to Polka music. We went there to kill, in anger, and to make the cost of war so high on our enemies that they would rather live under our rule that fight us. Its angry business, the angrier we are, the shorter the war will be. This is what's wrong with the way America fights its wars today. Total war ends quickly, just ask Japan. Fight hard, get angry, win, get over it....
Posted by 49 Pan 2016-05-29 13:03||   2016-05-29 13:03|| Front Page Top

#6 Considering we haven't used them in over 70 years despite some people just begging for it, I'd say that's a better record than most other nations might have.
Posted by Flinetch Pelosi4105 2016-05-29 13:25||   2016-05-29 13:25|| Front Page Top

#7 ...and the whole "in Anger" thing? You'd be OK with it, Brian, if they were used in joy?
Posted by Flinetch Pelosi4105 2016-05-29 13:27||   2016-05-29 13:27|| Front Page Top

#8 Anger: The new asymmetric war thing.
Posted by Shipman 2016-05-29 13:56||   2016-05-29 13:56|| Front Page Top

#9 Brian, of course, has been benched for a while now for lying. But he still knows how to use his yap to keep himself in the public eye.
Posted by M. Murcek 2016-05-29 16:43||   2016-05-29 16:43|| Front Page Top

#10 Most anyone with military experience know that "we’re the only nation to have used them in anger" means nothing but that we are the only nation to have used them in wartime. He was not referring to an emotional state.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2016-05-29 17:04||   2016-05-29 17:04|| Front Page Top

#11 it was a goodwill measure
Posted by Frank G 2016-05-29 17:14||   2016-05-29 17:14|| Front Page Top

#12 Still lying after all these years.
Posted by Jack Salami 2016-05-29 17:33||   2016-05-29 17:33|| Front Page Top

#13 The only nation to ever use nuclear weapons, also the only nation to choose not to use them in subsequent wars.
Posted by rjschwarz 2016-05-29 22:05||   2016-05-29 22:05|| Front Page Top

09:27 Warthog
09:11 Mercutio
09:07 AlmostAnonymous5839
08:52 Matt
08:24 Matt
08:20 SteveS
07:43 Procopius2k
07:42 BrerRabbit
07:42 Procopius2k
07:39 Procopius2k
07:36 Procopius2k
07:35 Procopius2k
07:34 trailing wife
07:31 Procopius2k
07:30 NN2N1
07:22 NN2N1
07:18 trailing wife
07:14 Richard Aubrey
07:10 NN2N1
07:09 Besoeker
07:03 NN2N1
06:58 NN2N1
06:58 Besoeker
05:28 Whiskey Mike









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com