Senate report concludes: no proof of contact between

[--Pete]

Hi,

Define war criminal.

However one choses to define it, it either should not apply to those who do weapons research or it should. Thus, Von Braun was not a war criminal or all the Los Alamos folk were. One cannot have it both ways; one set of rules for us and a different set for them.

Whenever I think of 'rules of war' (e.g., the Geneva Convention) my mind gets addled. Ultimately, there can only be one rule; win. The winners get to determine what was right, what was wrong, who should be punished and how.

As for 'war criminals', seldom are the actions directly pertaining to the war effort found to be criminal. Usually it is the behavior of garrison troops in a conquered region or the treatment of POWs or the excesses of self styled militias that are held to be war crimes. But these actions are, at best, tangential to an actual war effort.

For the countries that planned, sanctioned, and executed the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo (among many others) to treat the attacks on London whether by bombers or V weapons as 'war crimes' would have been the height of hypocrisy.

--Pete