Being on TV

Actually being on LTC TV and George Anthes' City Life Show, which includes Tom Byrne on camera and John McDonough behind the cameras. Doesn't this remind us of some previous incarnation? Of course, it does.

For those who are interested in George Anthes--remembering him from his days on WCAP--you can also catch in as a live feed from the LTC website.

For those who noted I skipped posting yesterday--I also skipped class. I finished a Telephone Conference at 1500 and came home, and instead of watching George on TV, went to bed. I have some sort of a bug.

But, back to live TV.

The first thing to note is that I need to lose 60 pounds. I should have been working on that all Summer, but sadly was not. If I had, there would have been a lot less to lose at this point.

One of the things that came up during the 1+30 with Richard Howe and Tom Byrne was how much time one spends keeping a blog up to speed. I said an hour, but in fact it can be more than that. My posting on the British scandal over the detention of the British shadow Home Secretary took two hours plus. Getting the facts straight and making sure the sentences are correct and make sense and vetting and including links takes time. And, I enjoy doing it.

During the time, Tom Byrne and I got into a discussion on if we would have used nuclear weapons against Germany during World War II. Tom asserted that since we never deployed the B-29s to England, we weren't serious about going after Germany. I countered that the B-17/B-24 infrastructure was in place and that the greater range of the B-29 suited the Pacific.

With regard to actually using nuclear weapons on Germany, I stand by my statement of yes, but wish to make some caveats. We would still have had to be at war with Germany in August of 1945. I expect that the prospect of victory would have had to be fairly far out in the future, which means the Normandy landings would have not yet taken place (or our forces were contained in the beachhead area) and the Soviet Union would still be stalled out, perhaps having badly lost the Battle of Kursk in 1943. Just as the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was based upon a much longer war and a great increase in casualties, such would be the case with regard to Germany.

We would have had three nuclear device in the Summer of 1945. How would we have used them? Germany was the opposite of Japan, in that in Japan the military wanted to fight on to the end, but the Emperor realized it was time to save the people. In Germany the military was moving toward cutting a deal, but the Supreme Leader was willing to let the people perish. Also, in the case of Germany, there was the Holocaust raging. That alone, if the Allies were able to acknowledge it, would have justified major acts to terminate the war quickly.

Politics, as always, came up. And the question of Senator Clinton as the nominee for Secretary of State. This issue was addressed this morning by Joan Vennochi, in a column in the Globe, where she views the choice of Senator Clinton as "bitter brew" for Senator Kerry. On the other hand, maybe Senator Kerry is right where he wants to be as Chairman of the Senator Foreign Relations Committee. Let us all hope he uses that position to enhance the Department of State and not hobble it, as his predecessors have. The folks at the Department of State are dedicated Americans, working hard to achieve US foreign policy objectives. It is easy to dismiss them as the "wine and cheese" crowd, but that would be grossly unfair.

(In a side note, Joseph Cirincione yesterday lost a lot of credibility with me when he described Senator Kerry as a "nuclear expert.")

But, back to the show, I thoroughly enjoyed myself being on George's show on LTC, even if George wasn't there.

I included as a label for this post "History," since it included many interactions with Tom Byrne.

Regards -- Cliff