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Interested in Half the Facts?

Gary Hart asks a great question in an op-ed on Salon today:

Suppose that in March or April 1941, 14 Americans with lengthy backgrounds in national security affairs had reported to President Franklin Roosevelt that the United States was going to be attacked somewhere, sometime, somehow by the Japanese, that this attack would result in large numbers of American casualties, and these officially appointed Americans had strongly recommended to the Roosevelt administration that it take urgent steps to help prevent such an attack. Further suppose that Roosevelt had done little if anything in response to this warning, and that almost eight months later, as it happened, the Japanese attacked American facilities at Pearl Harbor, and almost 2,000 Americans died. Suppose after this attack official inquiries were launched, as it also happened, as to why there was a failure of intelligence, what actions were or were not taken based on what intelligence there was, and what could be done to prevent such catastrophic surprises in the future. And finally suppose that the official commission created to investigate the tragedy of Pearl Harbor failed to call upon the original 14 Americans who forecast the attack and forewarned against it.

Now move this supposed scenario forward to 2004 and you have virtually a perfect fit and an actual set of circumstances. The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former Sen. Warren Rudman and myself, reported to President George W. Bush and his new administration in January 2001 that terrorists were surely going to attack the United States and that our country was woefully unprepared. We documented the lack of intelligence coordination against this threat and the lack of preparation of up to two dozen federal agencies, as well as state and local governments, to prevent such attacks or respond to them when they did occur. Though we had no ability to forecast specific times, places and methods for such attacks, we were united in our certainty that they were bound to occur. In our first report we said: "America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland [and] Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." In our final report we urged the new Bush administration to create a national homeland security agency to prevent terrorist attacks.

Read on for the rest of the story...

Posted on April 5, 2004 11:16 PM

Comments

In fact, Franklin Roosevelt DID engineer an attack on Pearl Harbor with the intention to bring America in to the war. With the native reluctance of Americans at that time to get into wars and his campaign promise to keep America out of war, he needed an excuse to become involved.

When Japan signed a mutual pact with Germany and Italy to join the Axis Powers, the path to war was opened to Roosevelt.

FDR had just come from a meeting with Churchill when he shifted the US Naval Fleet into the South Pacific, placed a punishing embargo on oil, steel and other commodities necessary to Japan's developing industries. When Japan did not take the bait to attack a US naval vessel, as the Germans did the Lusitania in 1914 (the Lusitania was actually a naval vessel re-outfitted for commercial passengers and cargo), Roosevelt reduced the amount of fuel available to the Pacific fleet so that two of the three fleets had to remain in port and only one fleet could be in the relative protection of the open seas. Orders also came down for the ships to be lined up and barrage balloonw taken down.

Surveillance of the Japanese dentist who was spying on Pearl Harbor and the interception and decoding of his transmissions to Tokyo were not provided the Fleet Admiral, Kimnitz.

Commercial shipping routes were shifted to ensure that the Japanese fleet would not be discovered and when the decoded attack messages were delivered to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who held them until just before the first wave of attack was to reach Pearl Harbor. Then he sent a warning message by Western Union instead of through the much faster military radio.

Nearly 3,000 US personnel died in the attack and Roosevelt had his excuse: A Day that will live in infamy. But December 7, 1941 was really another type of infamy.

It's interesting that Gary Hart would use the Pearl Harbor metaphor. It probably gives traitors a special delight to play with the ignorance and naivete of the American public. You weren't taught this in school because it would alert you to the infamy possible in our "elected" leaders. Several inquiries were convened following Pearl Harbor but the testimony and the evidence was lost in the chaos of preparing for war, prosecuting the war, and the messy clean up as GIs returned to pick up their lives again.

When I brought this kind of information to my history students, I was railroaded out of a 26 year career in the public schools. When the school principal found he could not coerce me to lie to the kids he engineered the end of my career. Today I reveal this and more to an average of 1500 people of all ages each day. I have not stopped teaching the truth, just changed the venue.

More information about FDR and Pearl Harbor can be found at

http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/FDR_%20and_%20Pearl_%20Harbor.htm

and

http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/fdr_planned_pearl_harbor.htm

allen aslan heart

Posted by Allen Aslan Heart on April 14, 2004 10:16 PM

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