Forgive me as I haven't read the entire thread, but I'd like to point out that there are many respected people (President Eisenhower, General MacArthur, others) that believe the bombings were militarily unnecessary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Militarily_unnecessary

You can read a lot of the debate at that wikipedia link. The heart of the argument is that the US knew that Japan was already defeated before dropping the bombs and that Japanese leadership was divided on surrender. Not to mention the Soviets were kicking their ass in Manchuria. Some assert that the US dropped the bombs more to scare the Soviets than to get the Japanese to surrender.

It's certainly possible that Japan would not have surrendered and bombing did save lives. However, I think it's a pretty good testament to the power of the military-industrial-congressional complex in the US that a pinko commie like myself hadn't even heard such criticism of the bombings until a month ago.