General Dwight Eisenhower on learning of the planned bombings: “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and voiced to [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’.”
Admiral William Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff: “The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb…The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Forces: “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
Ralph Bard, Under Secretary of the Navy: “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss…In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.”
Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer who prepared summaries of intercepted cables for Truman: “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it…we used [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.”
Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander: “The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
“NY Imam Wahaj has been extremely clear that he is working for Islam to destroy America.
"You don’t get involved in politics because it’s the American thing to do,” he said. “You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam. Wherever you came from, you came to America. And you came for one reason — for one reason only — to establish Allah’s deen [‘law’ or ‘way of life’ in Arabic].” And he predicted: “Democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”
This is the man extolled as a role model by the probable next mayor of New York.
Mayoral candidate Mamdani’s brazen gesture in visiting the mosque of Imam Siraj Wahhaj was intended to normalise Islamist extremism in America and show that it is in the ascendant because no one is even trying to stop it.
-- Melanie Phillips
1. The country is only a minor contributor to America’s drug problem; the necessary violence of war cannot be Biblically justified to protect American citizens
2. Both rural and urban terrain would be a nightmare for modern warfare
3. Venezuela’s forces are built for decades-long guerrilla war, not conventional defense
4. Logistics would be slow, vulnerable, and expensive
5. The out-of-order oil fields are unwinnable battlefields: sinkholes of corruption, sabotage, and ecological collapse.
6. Occupation would lead to political and economic chaos, not stability
7. The loss of young American infantry could easily surpass that of Vietnam
An invasion of Venezuela would be quick to start but impossible to finish. The terrain, the logistics, and the complexity of the country’s politics make it a trap for any foreign army. And far from securing oil or influence, it would likely unleash environmental and humanitarian chaos that no one could control. Venezuela is a fragile state sitting on a volatile resource, not a battlefield the U.S. could ever truly win.