hi tom. yes, you have the right picture, though it actually went further. it wasn't just a matter of *trying* to reach consensus before acting. unanimous consensus was essentially mandatory (an artifact of their particular brand of imperial government perhaps: disharmony/discord could not be allowed?). this is how the hard-liners were able to drag the conflict out as long as they did. however, while the cabinet was empowered with setting policy, they were required to obtain the emperor's blessing for all their decisions.
nor did this prohibit the emperor from taking things in hand, as when he initiated diplomatic efforts to seek a peace. he was very much up to speed on the affairs of government: the progress of the war and state of the military; the state of the economy; etc. now, the guy who wrote this piece in the standard (richard frank), he's simply trotting out the same old tired arguments and assertions. which he tries to lend a veneer of fresh originality by blowing a lot of hot air about all this compelling "new" evidence (it's been in the public domain going on nearly15 years now). but he backs up his premise with nothing but a bunch of data the better part of which could as easily be used to argue in the contrary. what is clear, and this is not a matter of interpretation, is that japanese peace efforts began at least as early as june of '45, by which time some 100 of their cities had been fire-bombed and their desperate, last-ditch attempt to blunt the american advance at okinawa had failed miserably. there could no longer be any doubt at this point about the inevitability of an invasion of japan itself. some interesting links which demonstrate how very selective frank is with his data: http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/08/06/42f4f59f0b6fc http://www.vw.cc.va.us/vwhansd/HIS122/Hiroshima.html http://www.counterpunch.org/krieger08062003.html i especially liked the latter two. there were several others i ran across over the course of this debate, but i can't seem to find them at the moment (i found them all on google). anyway, always interesting, these discussions. -chris b. _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
