XPost: alt.politics.obama, sac.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: peace-faggot@barackobama.com   
      
   What a gutless piece of shit.  The brother fucker an go to Japan   
   and make a pretense of "praying", while in America he   
   disrespects and attacks all religions except for Islam.  What a   
   disgrace to American leadership.   
      
   HIROSHIMA, Japan — Nearly 71 years after an American bomber   
   passed high above this Japanese city on a clear August morning   
   for a mission that would alter history, President Obama on   
   Friday called for an end to nuclear weapons in a solemn visit to   
   Hiroshima to offer respects to the victims of the world’s first   
   deployed atomic bomb.   
      
   Writing in the Hiroshima Peace Park guest book, Obama called for   
   the courage to “spread peace and pursue a world without nuclear   
   weapons.” In later remarks, he said that scientific strides must   
   be matched by moral progress or mankind was doomed.   
      
   Obama’s visit, the first to Hiroshima by a sitting U.S.   
   president, had stirred great anticipation here and across Japan   
   among those who longed for an American leader to acknowledge the   
   suffering of the estimated 140,000 killed during the bombing on   
   Aug. 6, 1945, and its aftermath. That figure includes 20,000   
   Koreans who had been forced by the Japanese military to work in   
   the city for the imperial war machine.   
      
   Three days later in 1945, a second U.S. atomic bomb in Nagasaki   
   killed a total of 80,000, including another 30,000 Koreans. Most   
   of those killed in both cities were civilians. The Japanese   
   emperor announced his nation’s surrender a week later.   
      
   On Friday, people lined streets as Obama’s motorcade entered the   
   city. The presidential limousine pulled up behind the Peace   
   Memorial Museum.   
      
   In the park, guests were seated just in front of the curved,   
   concrete cenotaph that pays tribute to the dead with an eternal   
   flame burning just beyond it. The Genbaku Dome, or A-bomb dome,   
   the preserved, skeletal remnants of a municipal building   
   destroyed in the blast, was visible in the distance.   
      
   National security adviser Susan E. Rice and Ambassador Caroline   
   Kennedy walked out from near the museum, along with their   
   Japanese counterparts, followed by Obama and Japanese Prime   
   Minister Shinzo Abe.   
      
   Then Obama was handed a wreath and laid it on a stand in front   
   of the cenotaph. He bowed his head and stood silently for a   
   minute. Abe then did the same.   
      
   “We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-   
   distant past,” Obama said. The souls of the people who died in   
   this city “speak to us,” he added. “They ask us to look inward,   
   to take stock of who we are and what we might become.”   
      
   The president called for nations to reconsider the development   
   of nuclear weapons and to roll back and “ultimately eliminate”   
   them.   
      
   “The world was forever changed here,” he said. “But today, the   
   children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a   
   precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then   
   extending to every child. That is the future we can choose, a   
   future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not for the   
   dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral   
   awakening.”   
      
   After the remarks, Obama and Abe walked to the front row to   
   greet Sunao Tsuboi, a survivor of the atomic blast, who stood up   
   clutching a walking cane. Then Obama greeted Shigeaki Mori,   
   another survivor, giving him a hug.   
      
   The president and prime minister then walked north toward the   
   dome. Reporters rushing to get photographs of the two got   
   involved in an aggressive shoving match with Secret Service   
   agents and Japanese security officials.   
      
   Obama and Abe stood together gazing at the dome for several   
   minutes. Abe appeared to be explaining the significance to   
   Obama. To their left was a statue of Sadako, a child who died of   
   radiation and became known for her colorful paper cranes, which   
   have become a symbol of Hiroshima’s effort to promote peace.   
      
   Obama’s motorcade snaked back through the city to the   
   helicopters waiting to ferry the president on the start of his   
   journey home after a week-long Asian trip.   
      
   Obama’s visit was infused with symbolism for the two nations   
   that have evolved from bitter World War II enemies into close   
   allies.   
      
   Prior to the ceremony, Obama visited the Marine Corps Air   
   Station in Iwakuni, about 25 miles south of Hiroshima, and spoke   
   to a group of U.S. and Japanese troops. He told them that his   
   trip to Hiroshima is “an opportunity to honor the memory of all   
   who were lost during World War II.”   
      
   Obama added: “It’s a chance to reaffirm our commitment to   
   pursuing the peace and security of a world where nuclear weapons   
   would no longer be necessary. And it’s a testament to how even   
   the most painful divides can be bridged; how our two nations —   
   former adversaries — cannot just become partners but become the   
   best of friends and the strongest of allies.”   
      
   The Iwakuni base, where U.S. Marines work side-by-side with   
   Japanese forces, “is a powerful example of the trust and the   
   cooperation and the friendship between the United States and   
   Japan,” he said.   
      
   Previous U.S. presidents had avoided Hiroshima over fears that a   
   visit would be regarded as an apology for President Harry   
   Truman’s decision to authorize the bombings, which historians   
   say were carried out in an attempt to avoid a planned invasion   
   of Japan.   
      
   But Obama and his advisers believed the time was right, in his   
   final year in office, to make the pilgrimage — not as an apology   
   but rather to highlight the alliance between the two nations and   
   to warn of the dangers of modern nuclear weapons exponentially   
   more powerful than the bombs dropped in Japan.   
      
   Obama has had mixed success in reducing and safeguarding global   
   stockpiles of nuclear weapons and fissile materials. Aides said   
   he hoped his visit, with seven months left in office, would   
   reaffirm the U.S. commitment to nuclear disarmament and   
   nonproliferation.   
      
   A day before his visit while attending an economic summit in Ise   
   City, Obama called the use of atomic bombs an “inflection point   
   in modern history” and said the fate of such weapons “is   
   something that all of us have had to deal with in one way or   
   another.”   
      
   For Obama, another challenge is to use the visit to advance the   
   process of reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific region, where old   
   wartime grievances have been slower to heal than among some of   
   the European combatants of World War II.   
      
   Obama sought to make clear that while all sides suffered, all   
   sides also bear responsibility for the horrors of war, even as   
   Japan and its neighbors continue a bitter debate over long-ago   
   wartime atrocities.   
      
   The White House has said it would welcome Abe to Pearl Harbor,   
   where plans are underway to mark the 75th anniversary of the   
   Japanese attack on Dec. 7. One senior U.S. official said he   
   would be surprised if Abe did not come, though the prime   
   minister said at a news conference this week that he had no such   
   plans at this time.   
      
   Abe reminded reporters that he gave a speech to the U.S.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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