Has George W. Bush ever heard of Akihito Ito? Dismayed at Pentagon plans to develop a new generation of "tactical" nuclear weapons — so-called mini-nukes — Ito sent Bush a gift: a box of CDs carrying the recorded voices of 284 atomic-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"I know there are U.S. laws forbidding politicians from accepting expensive presents, so I stuck a price on the cover," explains Ito, "$1."
The recordings contain enough horrors to keep even the architect of the Iraq War awake at night. Witness after witness describes incinerated and shredded human bodies, babies clinging to dead mothers, unrecognizable friends and loved ones.