Aug. 6 is truly a dark day in history

Sixty-two years ago today, our country unleashed the most lethal killing device known to man at the time - the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I have to admit that I get annoyed whenever the anniversary rolls around, and the history revisionists simply claim, "We should not have dropped the bomb." It's a debate that will undoubtedly outlive me if I live to be 100.

What people forget is that it's very hard to recreate the atmosphere and thinking that existed at the time. To me, all discussion on that time and that war should keep that in mind. Unless you lived it, and fewer and fewer of the people who actually did are with us to bear witness, I believe it's more difficult to accurately convey what World War II was like. The Japanese attacked us, and brought war to our shores. Even worse, they were going to fight to the death had we invaded their homeland.

People seem to forget perspective on the war, however. We killed more people during the firebombing of Tokyo and the bombing of Dresden, but that hardly ever gets any mention, because the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was accomplished with one bomb. In the end, while both events were tragedies for the people of Japan, I believe they both saved many lives on both sides, and ultimately they helped bring to an end a brutal war that killed over 30 million people.

August 6 is also infamous for another reason - this is the date, six years ago, that President Bush received his Presidential Daily Briefing while on vacation in Crawford, Texas "ranch" entitled, "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Were the plans for 9-11 too far along to have been thwarted, even if Bush had taken steps to prevent it? We'll never know, but what we do know is that the president did. ... Nothing.

I just finished reading two books that deal in part with 9-11 specifically and what the intelligence community knew prior to 9-11. It's sad and tragic that we had the raw data that could have thwarted the attacks, yet our intelligence community was too slow, unresponsive and unprepared to effectively deal with the threat.

Of course, I don't place blame for all of these problems squarely on Bush's shoulders, either. That would be myopic and partisan; the intelligence community had atrophied for years if not decades.

What I blame Bush for was again, doing nothing.

We really won't forget.

Bottom photo via Mock, Paper, Scissors