Originally Posted by CDSmith

I don't see how you or anyone else for that matter can sit here 60-odd years later and say for certain what would or wouldn't have happened "if only yaddayaddayadda..."

It's one thing to say doing something different during a certain point in history may have caused a different result, it's quite another to discount every other opinion on the table and set yours up as unilaterally right.

Fact is, unless you were in the room when those decisions were made you don't truly know each and every extenuating circumstance that had to be considered. The country's highest elected officials of the time came to the conlclusion that I expect didn't come lightly, nor was it a spur-of-the-moment decision. It was planned, thought out, debated.... opportunities for the enemy to surrender were made several times prior to the plan being executed, yet here we are this many decades later and we have armlchair quarterbacks not just second-guessing everything but actually stating outright that their way "WOULD HAVE been better".

No offense, but can't you sort of maybe see how kind of...um... laughable that is? :D