Your statement was ignorant, as was your reply. You wrote:
"Arguments are made on both sides of "was it necessary" and neither you nor I can definitively answer that question - no one will ever be able to."
Japan surrendered because of the atomic bomb. That is fact. No serious historian argues that the Japanese would have just given up without a lot more war, and certainly at the time there was no indication of that. More Japanese died during the August 8 firebombing of Tokyo than died at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and yet the devastating firebomb raids did not result in a move to surrender. Perhaps if several million more had been immolated there might have been movement, but even then, who knows? We might have had to invade Japan to end the war. No serious historian argues that an invasion of Japan would not have cost millions of lives of Japanese civilians, military, and our own soldiers. Even after the atomic bombs had been dropped there was fierce debate about the question of surrender, and even after the decision had been made there was an attempted coup by hardliners to stop the Emperor's speech from being broadcast. It was only by sheer luck that they failed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_IncidentAnd no serious historian disputes the fact that in those vast areas (such as across China) still held by the Japanese horrible atrocities were being committed by Imperial soldiers up to the surrender (look up the Rape of Nanking as an example of what could happen to areas under Imperial Army control). That war had to be ended, the sooner the better, and any other scenario besides the atom bombs, even with 20-20 hindsight involves a lot more death than actually occurred.
So my statement stands:
The only use of nuclear weapons by the US was to END a war not to START one.
The purpose of an Iranian bomb will be to START a war so that the Hidden Imam can manifest himself. And don't even dare to suggest that anything that the leadership of the DPRK does is on behalf of the people. Those SOBs are responsible for mass starvation and the worst hellhole on the planet. And they built nukes as an insurance policy to keep it that way. I am not OK with that.