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"Atomic bomb" is a long-standing term meaning any sort of nuclear weapon. It's a bit old fashioned these days, but I'm pretty sure it was used in that context in the poll. And certainly we have a right to have them because there is no law or principle that denies us the ability to have them on either moral or practical grounds.
It would have been very unpleasant for us had we not defeated Germany before they built a working atomic bomb. And we were then blessed by a lot of German brain power that enabled us to complete a working bomb before Japan got their nuclear program out of the laboratory stage. A working bomb in the hands of the Japanese prior to the end of WWII would also have been a very grim scenario for the USA. And if we had not built sufficient nuclear weapons to achieve deterrent parity with the USSR soon after WWII ended, the world might be a very different place, and not in a good way, than what it is.
The world is a much safer place because the USA has a sufficient nuclear arsenal and ability to use it on very short notice.
I agree with you, with a couple exceptions. The Manhattan Project benefited from the contributions of some European refugees, but American physicists, chemists, and other scientists were no less skilled that those from other countries. If "German brain power" had been that important, the Germans should have developed the atom bomb first, just as they were the first to develop a ballistic missile. Also, the industrial power of the U.S. had a lot to do with developing the bomb. Japan was too strapped by other demands to muster the enormous resources needed.
The U.S. did not have parity with the USSR after WWII, but absolute superiority. By the times of the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, the U.S. had a stockpile of about 200 bombs. During the first four years after the war, the U.S. could have, if it had wanted, dictated terms to any nation in the world--including the USSR. America could have forbidden any other nation to have the bomb, and enforced the ban with the threat of nuclear attack. The fact it had already shown its willingness to use atom bombs would have made that threat pretty credible.