When the United States adopted torture as a weapon in its “war on terror,” it was a turn to methods that shock the conscience, and when discovered, officials and their media surrogates went to great lengths to gain public acquiescence for their policies. It was not the first time the country betrayed its highest ideals, nor the first time U.S. citizens were led to deny that any betrayal had occurred. The United States had gone down the same road in 1945, when it used nuclear weapons to destroy two Japanese cities. One case involved the product of intensive scientific research, the other methods dating back hundreds of years, if not to prehistory. But in the way the U.S. government made and justified these fateful decisions, the two stories contain many disturbing parallels.