"If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war."
Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War

"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."
Plato

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
Ernest Hemmingway

"Older men declare war. But it's the youth who must fight and die!"
Herbert Hoover

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."
Jean-Paul Sartre

"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon."
Napoleon Bonaparte

"Join the Army! Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people, and kill them."
Unknown

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
Voltaire

"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."
John F. Kennedy

"The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service."
Albert Einstein

"I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask: Mother, what was war?"
Eve Merriam

"Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace."
Charles Sumner

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
Dwight Eisenhower

"It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers."
Unknown

"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living."
Omar Bradley

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both."
Abraham Flexner

"We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk."
Eleanor Roosevelt

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon."
David Lloyd George

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."
John F. Kennedy

"Either war is obsolete or men are."
R. Buckminster Fuller

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."
Jeannette Rankin, first woman Member of Congress

"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent."
Issac Asimov

"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations."
David Friedman

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."
Bertrand Russell

"A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves."
German Proverb

World War 2 Blunders 1. The first German serviceman killed in the war was killed by the Japanese (China, 1937), the first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians (Finland 1940), the highest ranking American killed was Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps. So much for allies. 2. The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded and given a Dishonorable Discharge for lying about his age. (His benefits were later restored by act of Congress) 3. At the time of Pearl Harbor the top US Navy command was Called CINCUS (pronounced "sink us"), the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th. Infantry division was the Swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika". All three were soon changed for PR purposes. 4. More US servicemen died in the Air Corps than the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30 missions your chance of being killed was 71%. 5. Generally speaking there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a cargo plane. 6. It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in aiming. This was a mistake. Tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. This was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down. 7. When allied armies reached the Rhine the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton (who had himself photographed in the act). 8. German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City but it wasn't worth the effort. 9. German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet. 10. Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army. 11. Following a massive naval bombardment 35, 000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska. 21 troops were killed in the firefight. It would have been worse if there had been any Japanese on the island. Original PtLaPta Material=> Original Score Additional Material=> Cardinal Spellman Click here to return to Petey and Petunia home page.