It has been 54 years since the first atomic bomb fell from the belly of a B-29 and destroyed most of Hiroshima, a city in southwest Honshu, the most populous of Japan's islands.

The single bomb killed 118,661 people. It severely injured 30,524. It less severely injured 48,606. And that bomb, compared with today's hydrogen bombs lying about here and there, was a hand grenade.

I bring this up in part to put the current day's propaganda into some perspective. Serbia, for example, was accused of "genocide" at a time when only 2,000 people, both Serb and Albanian, had been killed in a little civil war during a two-year period in an obscure Balkan province. That's 2,000 in two years compared with 118,000 in a fraction of a minute. But guess who's getting called war criminals.

I'm opposed to so-called war crimes. Only the winners get to decide who is a war criminal, and the "criminals" are, of course, all on the losing side.

It is one of the more heinous perversions of language and morality to purport that killing unarmed civilians with rifles is a war crime but that killing the same unarmed civilians with a bomb or an artillery shell is just "collateral damage."

Nearly all of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims, not to mention all those who died in the Tokyo firestorm we started, were unarmed civilians--old men, women, children, babies. We knew that at the time we killed them. But because we won the war, we were not declared war criminals or terrorists.

So whether one is a war criminal or a war hero depends on whether one is on the winning or the losing side. War itself is a crime against humanity just like Ernest Hemingway said. If war comes, you have to fight it, but you don't have to lie about what you are doing.

I suspect that, given the low caliber of public officials and the apparent consensus that the American government should pursue an imperialistic foreign policy, there is another war waiting for us somewhere down the road. There is no use kidding ourselves that a U.S. attempt to dominate the world won't meet with resistance. This war won't be one of those easy muggings of a small country but a war that will teach a new generation of Americans what war really is.

To purport to go to war for humanitarian purposes is a contradiction in terms. Nothing is more inhumane than war. To state that you are going to kill people and destroy their homes and jobs for humanitarian reasons is insanely hypocritical.

It's about as nutty as a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team warning some guy who is threatening to kill himself that, if he doesn't surrender, they will kill him. That actually happens. Making war for humanitarian reasons is like ending a hunger strike by withholding food. It plain makes no sense to create human misery in the name of stopping human misery.

These days language is being mutilated more than even George Orwell could imagine. Humanitarian, once a legitimate word that meant promoting human welfare, is now the fashionable excuse to send in military forces for the express purpose of injuring the human welfare of whatever faction our government or the United Nations decides to call the enemy.

I would call the unnecessary deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children (that's a United Nations figure, not mine) a humanitarian crisis. We are the cause of that, and we could end it with nothing more than four words: The embargo is lifted. But, of course, the U.S. government will not speak those words. It will not even admit responsibility for the deaths.

After being called on its obvious inconsistency (all humanitarian crises are equal, but some apparently are more equal than others), the government now boldly proclaims that of course it's inconsistent. That's really weird.

Imagine asking someone why he or she was acting in an inconsistent manner and have that person reply, "Well, of course, I have to be inconsistent." Where's the guy with the net--or maybe a straitjacket would be better--when you need him?

The current administration apparently sees the U.S. military as a sort of globalist foreign legion that can be asked to dig sewers in Haiti, shoot people in Somalia, and bomb them in Serbia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and anywhere else when the president needs a diversion.

As for humanitarian crises, that's what the Red Cross is for. If you want to promote human welfare, send food and medicine, not soldiers and bombs.

The ground rules were simple: Use laptop computers purchased at local stores and software downloaded from the Internet. Target only unclassified government computer systems. And see how far you can get.

The "Red Team" hackers hit the jackpot. In less than three months, they secretly penetrated computers that control electrical grids in Los Angeles, Washington and other major cities. They broke into networks that direct 911 emergency response systems. They even got access to the Pentagon's National Military Command Center, the heart of America's war fighting operation.

The Pentagon's mid-1997 "Eligible Receiver" exercise, carried out by a team of about 30 computer specialists from the National Security Agency, showed the theoretical vulnerability of America's civilian and military logistics and infrastructure to cyber-attack.

Now "Moonlight Maze" has proved the case. The FBI-led inquiry found that real hackers apparently based in Russia have used the Internet to download essential military technical research, including missile guidance programs, and other data from unclassified Defense Department and other government computers for more than a year. The FBI's inability to identify the covert intruders only highlights the danger in America's increasingly wired world.

The U.S. has become "extraordinarily vulnerable" to cyber-savvy foes who seek to penetrate or sabotage critical computer systems, said Richard Clark, President Clinton's national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counter-terrorism.

"An enemy could systematically disrupt banking, transportation, utilities, finance, government functions and defense," Clark said in an interview. "We know other countries that are developing information technology and are doing reconnaissance of our computer networks."

Experts say the U.S. clearly leads the way in cyber-warfare technology. But Russia, Israel, France, England and India are also seeking to develop cyber-weapons, U.S. officials say. China is further behind but has demonstrated increasing sophistication.

"It's cheaper and easier than building a nuclear weapon," Clark said. "It takes fewer people and far less money."

The U.S. was on the brink of war with North Korea during a crisis five years ago, former Defense Secretary William Perry revealed.

Perry's remarks came during a Clinton administration announcement last month that it was easing long-standing economic sanctions against the communist country because another crisis over North Korea's planned missile tests had been averted by diplomacy.

The earlier crisis developed during the summer of 1994. Then, according to former Pentagon officials, the U.S. military drew up plans to send cruise missiles and F-117 stealth fighters to strike a small nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, in order to prevent North Korea from recovering the raw material to make nuclear bombs.

"I believe it would have resulted almost certainly in war," said Robert Gallucci who was the State Department's point man on Korea in 1994. He was sure an attack on Yongbyon would spark another war on the Korean peninsula, a war--sources say--in which the Pentagon had forecast up to one million deaths.

Perry, who had ordered the planning for the preemptive strike, ultimately rejected it. While he was convinced the U.S. military could take out the Yongbyon plant with little risk of spreading radiation, Perry also believed the attack would result in all-out war.

Instead, Perry recommended President Clinton seek tougher United Nations sanctions--which, while less provocative, also carried a high risk. "I had personally been told by the North Korean head of the delegation that a sanctions resolution and actions to implement (the sanctions) could well be taken as an act of war, given that the UN was a belligerent in the Korean War and there was an armistice in place," Gallucci recounted.

The Pentagon was advocating a "middle option"--moving 10,000 more troops, along with F-117s, long-range bombers and an additional carrier battle group to Korea or nearby. "We were within a day of making major additions to our troop deployments to Korea, and we were about to undertake an evacuation of American civilians from Korea," Perry recalled.

"My recollection is that before the president was asked to choose, we were told that there was a telephone call from former president Carter in Pyongyang and that he wished to speak to me," Gallucci remembered.

Jimmy Carter had been meeting as a private citizen with North Korea's aging leader Kim Il Sung, and was calling to report a breakthrough. The White House session broke up and relieved officials watched television as Carter informed CNN by telephone of the latest development.

At the Imperial War Museum in London, England, visitors are intrigued by a unique clock and digital counter. This clock does not keep time. Its purpose is to help people grasp the magnitude of a central feature of this century--war. As the hand of the clock rotates, the counter adds another number to its tally every 3.31 seconds. Each number represents a man, woman or child who has died as a result of war during the 20th century.

At midnight on December 31, 1999, the counting will end and it will register 100 million, a conservative estimate of the number of those who have died in war during the past 100 years.

Imagine, 100 million people! Yet that statistic reveals nothing about the terrors and pain experienced by the victims. Neither does it describe the suffering of the loved ones of those who died--the countless millions of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, widows and orphans. What the statistic does tell us is this: Ours has been by far the most destructive century in all human history; its savagery is unparalleled.

The history of the 20th century also shows to what extent humans have become expert in the craft of killing. Throughout history the development of new weapons went slowly until the 20th century, which has produced an avalanche of weapons. When the first world war began in 1914, the armies of Europe included men on horseback, armed with lances. Today, with the help of satellite sensors and computerized guidance systems, missiles can deliver death to any part of the Earth, with astonishing accuracy. The intervening years have seen the development and perfecting of guns, tanks, submarines, warplanes, biological and chemical weapons, and, of course, "the bomb."

When the Cold War ended in 1989, many expressed confidence in a peaceful world order. Still, war continued. During the next seven years, an estimated 101 conflicts raged in various places. Most were wars not between states but within states. They were fought by opposing groups with unsophisticated weapons. In Rwanda, for example, much of the killing was done with machetes.

Meanwhile, in the rich nations of the world, high-tech weapon development continues apace. Sensors--whether deployed in the air, in space, in the ocean, or on the ground--enable a modern army to see more quickly and clearly than ever before, even in difficult terrain such as jungles. As the new technologies are perfected and integrated, "distance warfare" moves toward reality, enabling an army to see everything, hit everything, and destroy much that an enemy has.

In considering the prospect of future war, we should not forget the menacing presence of nuclear weapons. The Futurist magazine predicts: "The continuing proliferation of atomic weapons makes it increasingly likely that we shall have one or more atomic wars within the next 30 years. In addition, atomic weapons may be used by terrorists."

What has frustrated efforts to achieve global peace? An obvious factor is that the human family is fragmented into nations and cultures that distrust, hate or fear one another. There are conflicting values, perceptions and goals. Furthermore, use of military power has for millenniums been seen as a legitimate way to pursue national interests. After acknowledging this situation, a report from the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College stated: "To many, this implied that peace would only come with world government."

We are going to investigate the Waco tragedy once again, based on new evidence that lies were told in defense of the government's armed assault on a religious compound. Unless there is some change in direction, this investigation will be as fruitless as the first one.

We are being set up to believe that if the FBI did not start the fire, the demonized David Koresh did, so everything that happened was his fault. This is more than a wrong assumption. This is a lie posturing as an assumption. The truth is that the safety of the children should have been the top priority guiding the hands of the U.S. government and its agents. It was not, and that is the everlasting shame of Waco.

Of all the events of the past decade that led to cynicism of the government and alienation from it, none had the impact of the Waco tragedy. Nearly 80 American citizens died horrible deaths, including two pregnant women and 25 children, 17 of whom were under 10 years of age. They burned to death in a lantern-lit, wooden structure that had been violently rammed by armored tanks and assaulted by chemical weapons. The attack was authorized by President Clinton and ordered by Attorney General Reno.

It was a tragedy that would have toppled most civilized governments, or at least resulted in the resignation of a few top-level scapegoats--but not in an America where justice is routinely mangled, the Constitution is ignored, and corruption thrives in high places.

The behavior of the mainstream media was revealing. In every other instance, if 25 children died horrible and arguably unnecessary deaths, the reporters and cameras would have been all over the story. Every lurid detail and aspect of the carnage would have been tediously exploited.

But that didn't happen. We didn't view the funerals, hear the gospel music or listen to the praise heaped on the dead by those who knew and loved them. There was no national mourning. President Clinton did not show up to deliver the eulogy. He didn't plant a dogwood tree on the White House grounds in memory of them as he did for the precious children who died in the Oklahoma City bombing. This time, honoring the victims served no political agenda.

It is as though it would have been politically incorrect to have covered the story with attention-getting intensity. To make too much of it might have aroused sympathy for the victims, or even worse, aroused questions about why "getting" the "evil" Koresh outweighed the endangerment of the children.

This was not like Columbine or Oklahoma City. This was not like the deaths of John Kennedy Jr. or Princess Diana. This time, you see, we were dealing with religious "nuts" and "fanatics."

Before the fire, huge tanks had rumbled up and rammed gaping holes in the walls of the buildings. Heavy volumes of gas were pumped into the structures, saturating the air, burning the skin, blinding the eyes. The plaintive wails of frightened, coughing children filled the air. They were held close, and told to be brave.

Outside, loudspeakers blared, "This is not an assault! This is not an assault!"--a message so ludicrous that those inside must have doubted their own senses.

There were, no doubt, screams of fear and pain from the children and babies, cries of horror, shouted prayers and supplications ... thick black smoke ... the rising heat of fierce, wind-driven flames ... panic ... confusion ... child-calls for "mama!" … the end.

When Attorney General Reno accepted full responsibility for all of this, she became a hero to the Washington establishment. Rather than an indictment for criminal negligence, reckless child endangerment and violation of the civil rights of innocent children, she was congratulated for her courage in saying "the buck stops here." She still insists she has "done nothing wrong."

Officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell were sent to prison for violating the civil rights of ex-felon Rodney King by using excessive force while arresting him. Was not the whole Waco operation, including the gassing of infants and children, an excessive use of force in making an arrest?

Who protects the civil rights of the innocent when it is the government itself who violates them?