9/11 poll

[Easter Egg]

Not sure if "they" caused 9/11 themselves but it's obvious "they" took advantage of it since that day in every possible way.

How the Republicans hijacked 9/11?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 7#26649407

Hop in on 3 minutes 30 sec.

[Easter Egg]

Even better. Watch it right from the beginning.

[colonel]

We now know that naughty old Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbour would be happening, as the US had broken Japanese naval codes. However, he wanted an excuse to go to war against the fascists of Japan and just moved the US aircraft carriers out of the Harbour, leaving just enough battleships and men to get killed to cause an absolute desire to war with the right boats to fight it....

So Roosevelt didn't start or organise Pearl Harbour- but didn't stop it either.

I wonder if this applies to any other US incidents over the last ten years..?

[andy at handiwork]

We most certainly dont know that FDR 'knew PH would be happening'. A whole raft of circumstantial evidence is regularly put forward. Britain's congenital paranoia about secrecy creates a vacuum which allows the 'there must be more to this' brigade to fill the gaps. Annoyingly, when records are finally release after 75 years more often than not they turn out to be dull, boring and harmless.

The sigint intelligence story of the lead up to PH is complicated but comes down to success in some areas, failure in others. Inter-service rivalry in the US led to delays in decryption, dissemination and analysis of what intelligence was available. The Americans had indeed manage quite good penentration of Japanese codes but had concentrated to a large extent on the diplomatic rather than harder military side. In fact on Dec 3 there was a very large increase in the diplomatic traffic which used up a lot of the US resources in what was as yet a quite small American operation. It was this work load that prevented a 'Red Magic' message from the Japanese naval attache's office in Honolulu detailing what craft were in harbour and where, from being decrypted and studied until the week after the attack. The spying clerk gained a lot of his intelligence working in the naval officers club at Pearl.

There was no indication in the sigint of Japanese military intentions, either an attack on PH or anywhere else. One message sent to Nagumo on Dec 2 intercepted and read, stated 'Climb Mount Niitake 1208'. We now know it was the prearranged signal to start the war on America. I doubt if any American analyst at the time could have deduced the specific Japanese intentions from that.

The mission briefing was conducted in Japan, and no radio traffic was allowed from the fleet after it sailed. Any non Japanese shipping encountered was to be sunk, and the route taken was well off normal shipping lanes and out of reach of US and British recon planes had the soon-to-be allies thought there was any need for them anyway.

As for FDR and Churchill, logic would suggest that neither can be accused of anything more than complacency on the part of the former and wishful thinking on the other's. A message from WC to FDR on 26th nov, now hidden in the PRO til 2016 has been alleged to be the warning from Britain of the attack, but on the other hand it could be the warning that large Japanese convoys were moving south from Indo-China, a movement that finally convinced the US that war was inevitable but not when. The risk to Churchill and to Britain's surviving the war, of being discovered to be part of such a conspiracy as is suggested, was huge, especially when you realise how short lived secrecy is in the US. A gamble like that, when we needed a strong US naval presence in the Pacific that we hoped would protect our interests, would have been too much even for a scheming gambler like WC.

As for FDR, he was a naval man through and through. He referred to the navy as 'us' and the army as 'them'. He would not have conived in the destruction of the bulk of his beloved navy to save our bacon. To get away with it would have required the collusion and cooperation of Stark the chief of naval operations, and General Marshall, one of the towering individuals of the war on the allied side., as well as intelligence staffs from senior officer top to enlisted rating bottom. Had FDR known it would have been enough to set a trap that did not involve loosing the fleet and the many thousands killed, whilst showing Japanese aggression to the world, Congress and the American people.

Pearl Harbour was a carefully planned, brilliantly carried out operation by a determined aggressor. The US could not bring itself to believe that Japan for all its sabre rattling would be so bold or stupid to do what they did. Complacency and hubris on the part of the Americans also played a part, not to mention the inadequate analysis of what intelligence they gained from Magic.

As clever as the attack was though, lets not forget it was the Royal Navy Mediterranean fleet under the command of Andrew Cunningham, with James Somerville the finest fighting admiral we had in WW2, who attacked and largely destroyed the Italian fleet at Matapan months before Pearl in an operation that could only have given the Japanese planners much food for thought. Pity it didn't do much stirring in Washington.

[colonel]

In the fifth paragraph, you mention a document sealed until 2016...75 years!

Why seal an innocuous document for 75 years?

[andy at handiwork]

As I made clear, British governments are obsessed with secrecy. Although a lot more is released quicker now, there is still a resistance in the circles of power to de-classifying old material. Quite often a document that historians have waited 50 years for turns out to be extremely mundane and dull, with no apparent reason for its long retention. Its just the way it is in this country. There are thousands of unreleased documents. For instance no documents relating to intercepts made by the British against the Japanese in the years leading up to the second world war have been released. That is not to say there is a 'smoking gun' lurking in the files. There really is less to all this than meets the eye.

[andy at handiwork]

What is about this event that people find so hard to accept? Nineteen men with determination, percieved grievences against the west and misplaced religous fervour planned and carried it out. At any number of stages along the way they were helped by American indifference, political chicanery, inter-service rivalry ( between the FBI and NSA), incompetance, and sheer good luck. There was plenty of information going around but it got lost in the 'static'. A 'cant see the wood for the trees' situation. Some of them were educated enough to learn to fly (though nobody at the schools seemed to notice that they didn't seem interested in the landing part of flying, and if they did their concerns were not passed on), and to work out the timetables that would allow for maximum fuel on board and less security at airports, less than stringent security at the airport check-ins, and so on. Doubtless they had considerable financial and logistical help from others (not the US), perhaps some of the Saudis allowed to leave later that day on the only planes permitted to fly, but it was not a plot that was beyond the capabilities of dedicated attackers.
The real US conspiracy was the one that allowed them to leave, so as not to embarrass the House Of Saud, Bush's great financial friends.

As for the US government's attitude towards those affected that day, a good indication is the way many hundreds of those who worked long shifts scouring the debris in the days and weeks after the attack, are now suffering long term health problems that are not being dealt with or even acknowledged.

[thesaint3333]

I watched JFK earlier.

Documents for his assassination from 1963 will not be released until 2038.

So wrong!

[JonnyHungwell]

I don't find it hard to believe that it was carried out by these Muslim lunatics.