Bear = rhino.

What is that post even supposed to mean?

And a conventional invasion would have killed American troops, Japanese troops, MORE Japanese civilians than the a-bombs through starvation and carpet bombing, all the while potentially taking the war into 1946.

Why do people think conventional invasion was so clean at the time? Targeting civilian structures was commonplace in that period of war. Thankfully, the western world has progressed technology past that point.

Once again, ONLY if you accept the premise that the Japanese didn't want to surrender. They did.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was hardly unprovoked. The US had been supporting and supplying the Chinese, handing out oil embargos on the Japanese. From the Japanese perspective, that IS provocation.

George Kennan (after learning from his mistakes) suggested that we try to see things through our 'opponents' eyes because we expect them to see through ours.

this is true, but one thing.  The situation with Germany that led up to WW2 was a direct result of the allies not working together, and not enforcing the treaty.  What you said works too, but it still could have easily been avoided if the US and Britain didn't allow Germany to do whatever they wanted.   The US still believed in isolation, and this war is what made the US what it is today. 

I myself am totally ashamed of Nato's war with Japan. Here in Canada Japanese citizens were rounded up and put in camps their property ceased and sold. But the bombs in my opinion were the second biggest criminal act in recorded history second only to the Holocaust.

I was taught in my social studies class something that American's aren't taught in theirs. Infact only a small paragraph about it was in my text book. According to my text book in July the Japanese Emperor sent an ambassador to Russia to talk about ending the war with America. At the time Russia was preparing to enter the war and had strong diplomatic ties to the United States. The Japanese Envoy tried to make a deal with the US through Russia. Pretty much a cease and desist deal in which Japan would cease hostilities.

However the United States wasn't satisfied with Japan's change of heart. They decided not to start up talks and not to negotiate an end to the war. Of course Japan also did not publically denounce the war their negotiations were shot down so the emperor continued with the public propaganda.

So a month after Japan tried to make peace the US bombed the living crap out of them, not once but twice.

In my opinion the Nukes were nothing but a show of force. The US government wanted the whole world to know you don't mess with America. They wanted to strike fear into the hearts of the rest of the world. It worked but at what cost? Hundreds of thousands of lives for what? So that American's could feel superior for a little while? That started a major arms race which lead to the cold war.

What if the US never nuked Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Would Russia have felt threatened and rushed into a nuclear arms race with the US. Would China have ever united under communist leadership? Would the Korean war have occured. Infact all of the late 1900's could have been drastically changed in our favour.

The world would have been a far better place for all of us if the US had just started surrender talks and negotiated a cease fire and peace agreement with Japan

The Japanese did not have to attack territories within the US sphere of influence. They could have focused on French, Dutch and British colonial interests instead, and America aside from imposing their embargo likely would have cared less. The average American at the time had an isolationist view on the war and did not want to get involved. It would have been very difficult to get public support behind a war effort had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor. There was plenty of oil and other resources in South East Asia the Japanese could have exploited without starting a full scale military conflict with the US.

Japan attacked America because it felt threatened and thought that by eliminating the US' largest Naval presence in the Pacific, that it would A, set America back at least a year logistically, and B, possibly deter them from becoming involved in continued violence. Interestingly, Isoroku Yamamoto, the man who designed the attack, was against it because he knew Japan could never defeat America in an all out war, but his superiors insisted on carrying out the plan anyway.

Plain and simple. Japan was not provoked. They could have made due with Southeast Asia and China. They were imperialists. They tried to take what was not theirs at the expense of others. Over 20 million Asians victims perished as a direct result. The 300,000 Japanese that died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki pales in comparison. America had to put a stop to the carnage that the Japanese started. They brought it upon themselves.

Even AFTER the bombs were dropped, there were factions within Japan that resisted and tried to stop the surrender.

Some of your assumptions that the Japanese were ready to roll over and give up completely are greatly overstated.

It was a war crime plain and simple. Dropping an A-bomb over a full fledged city where you know that everything within an x-mile radius is going to be obliterated is genocide. 

Now that you mention it, the amount of Russian soldiers and civilians killed in WW2 is one of highest in the history of mankind.