I really, really like how little background we get on the war itself before the dropping of the bomb -- just enough to know it was messy, just enough to not know quite how to take any of Neelix's statements (you are spot on about his capacity for lying), just enough that we are forced to consider the atrocity not as any kind of point in a historical continuum but simply for the shattering human impact that it had. There's no possible contextual justification. There's simply the cost, and how you live with it.

I really want more of the Neelix that we see in this episode and I don't know if we'll ever get it, but I'm only early in season two out of seven, so who's to say!