here's how it would be treated by the talking heads, the pols, the leaders, the religious guys, and Bill Clinton.

See article at:[url]http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson101801.shtml[/url]

[size=4]The Time Machine[/size=4]
A parody.

[i]By Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.
October 18, 2001 8:35 a.m.[/i]

[b]Newsflash! April 1, 1942[/b]

[b]America Strikes Back![/b]
Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle's Sixteen Bombers Take Off From Hornet to Bomb Tokyo!

Read the National News Roundup of American Reactions to the Marvelous Doolittle Raid!

ABC's [b]Peter Jennings[/b] offered the following commentary from preliminary reports filtering in from Nationalist forces inside China.

"It is not all clear to Americans tonight that Colonel Doolittle and his crews always enjoyed clear visual bombing over Tokyo. Clouds and antiaircraft firing — some of the surviving pilots are reporting to our Chinese sources — may have caused 'weaving,' made still worse by pilot panic or inattention. Yet all 16 crews, ABC News has been told, were under strict orders by Colonel Doolittle to drop their bomb loads despite clear and advanced warnings of inclement weather, resulting in significant but undisclosed collateral damage. Japanese sources tell ABC News that perhaps 50 civilians were killed and an undisclosed number of were wounded.

"Whether Admiral King was aware of this 'drop, don't verify' order — or, in fact, himself gave it — is something we are now investigating. Would it not be ironic that four months after we were surprised and suffered noncombatant deaths at Pearl Harbor, American warplanes in a similar fashion bombed unexpectedly and indiscriminately — resulting in a similar or even much greater loss of civilian life? Yet another — but perhaps not the last — of the ironies of this, America's most perplexing and in some sense paradoxical war."

There's a bunch more, including Clinton, go read!

Eric The('30SecondsOverTaliban')Hun[>]:)]

That so perfectly captured all their opinions.

BTW, I think the raid was only worthy in a propaganda sense. Why waste all those planes and crews?

"If 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo happened today..." I would be the first in line to volunteer for the mission. Since I first heard their story I have admired these men. If you want to see the definition of "hero" look at those guys. They had balls of steel. Never under estimate the power of propaganda and symbolism. They reinvigorated a stunned America and made them feel like winners while bloodying the nose of an enemy who believe they were invincible. It was the begining of the end for the Japanese.