Five Years On, Unanswered Questions About December Seventh Remain

Transterrestrial Musings ^ | December 6, 2006 | Rand Simberg

[kalee]

ping

[Iconoclast2]

It is definitely loathsome to the concept of the Republic that it's citizens can be sacrificed as pawns in a global game for the ruling cabals

And as the Iraq Study Group recommends playing nice with Iran and Syria as they ship tons of weapons into Iraqto kill our citizens, the game contines. . .

[magslinger]

My Dad wasn't real fond of MacArthur either. He wasn't in the Philippines at the start of the war, but he was there at the end, retraining and refitting for the invasion in September. Dad had already gone ashore on Luzon, Okinawa and Mindanao.

MacArthur's disrespect to Truman during the Korean war did not improve Dads opinion of Doug one bit, either. Dad credited Truman with saving Dads life with his decision to drop the bomb.

[HIDEK6]

I kept on looking for the scrappleface byline embedded somewhere in the text.

So did I, but only because of the extreme nature of the end of the article.

This was a big deal at one time, though. In 1963 I was in high school and we were being taught how to debate.

The question I was given was whether Roosevelt allowed the Pearl Harbor attack.

It seemed ridiculous to me at the time, but we were given the historical record that the conspiracists were citing.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Some believe that the Roosevelt administration did it themselves, deliberately, making it look like Japanese religious fanatics were responsible, in order to drag the country into a war that they could get by no other means, to benefit arms merchants and the Jews.

I wouldn't go that far, but I wouldn't be surprised to see an opportunistic liberal to seize an opportunity to get his social agenda passed.

Remember, we're talking about a guy who gave Stalin half of Europe.

[HIDEK6]

Oh crap! Where have we heard that B$ before???

Technically speaking, we heard this after it was said in 1946 (if this article isn't a gag).

[He Rides A White Horse]

Transterrestrial Musings

Sounds more like Extraterrestrial musings, because this stuff is from outer space.

A Shintoist would never have desecrated Pearl Harbor with all of that leaking and burning diesel fuel and oil. It is fundamentally a religion of peace."

Yeah, okay.......that religion of peace mantra rehashed.

The Truman administration itself has admitted that there was a group of bombers in the area that morning, on its way from the mainland

That nails it.....American aircraft activity at the bastion of the Pacific Ocean. Duh.

The documentarian went on to expand on his theory. "We don't think that Japanese aircraft would have the range to get here all the way from Japan, but if by some miracle they did, it was probably to protect Honolulu, in which many Japanese live, from the administration plot. That's probably what people were seeing."

Protect Honolulu? Was LSD around then?....I think so.

"It was all part of the Zionist neo-liberal conspiracy to drag America into a needless war of choice."

It was the Joos; yeah that's it. Go away, (substitute words of your choice) vermin.

Some enterprising and innovative people have carried the analysis further. In one sequence shown in the documentary, a man built a wooden model of the ship in his pond, and filmed himself dropping lit firecrackers on it from above, to demonstrate how preposterous was the notion that ships could be sunk by bombs. They seemed to have no effect other than a slight scorching of the deck, and the sturdy little toy remained afloat.

How did your rubber duckie fare in your scientific bathtub experiment?

[finnigan2]

"So...do you believe that Roosevelt and others knew about the impending attack and said nothing?"

- In my opinion, Roosevelt should have known. There were enough straws in the wind that, if taken as a whole, they should have been enough to alert the government to at least place Pacific Forces on alert.
However, today we tend to forget the overall complacency of a US that was smug in it's view of isolationism as a defense against attack and the fragmented and primitive state of intelligence - the US didn't even have a CIA on Dec 7/41.
If Roosevelt needed Pearl Harbour as an excuse to get into WWII, he didn't need to leave most of the fleet in port and all the planes on the ground. He could have had the fleet at sea, just as the carriers were, avoided many casualties, and still used the attack as the means to declare war.
I do think though that there is a possibility Churchill might have been aware that something was up and said nothing to Roosevelt. From Churchill's papers it is clear that he was practically frantic to get the US into the war and despaired of ever getting Roosevelt to go along. I think Churchill's diaries say that after he heard of Pearl Harbour, he had the best peaceful sleep in years because he knew that Roosevelt could no longer dither and, to him, this meant that winning the war was now just a matter of time.

[NonZeroSum]

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of satire?

[He Rides A White Horse]

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of satire?

Are you familiar with the blurring of satire and reality in our society?

[He Rides A White Horse]

Go through this post line for line, and you'll find people who are dead serious about these 'musings'.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

LOL!

[Kennesaw]

Please note: This article states Routers. not Reuters.... This is not a true article.

[NonZeroSum]

Go through this post line for line, and you'll find people who are dead serious about these 'musings'.

No one has ever seriously claimed that Roosevelt had charges planted on the Arizona. It's obviously satire of modern 911 conspiracy nuts using today's sixty-fifth anniversary as a hook.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Okay, you win. Feel better?

[GreenLanternCorps]

Killing Americans in the Commonwealth of the Philippines would have done it just as well as killing Americans in the Territory of Hawaii. Both were US soil, both had significant Army and Navy forces.

Roosevelt withdrew all US Forces from China (4th Marine Rgmt., Sub Force China, and the river gunboats) in November and early December of 1941. War was coming, it was only a matter of time. FDR wanted to let the Japanese strike first, as the American public would not support an declaration of war as it did against Germany in 1917, but he and everyone else thought the attack would come against the Philippines as part of an attack on Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies.

[engrpat]

In my mind, ranks right up there with the explosives planted to bring down the Twin Towers on 9/11

I would believe that was the purpose of this posting...making fun of the conspiracy nutz that are convinced that the Bush administration was behind 9/11. I have sent this to two people I know that are strong believers of this line of thinking. Good parody, like is one, can draw out the silliest lines of thought. Well done.

[engrpat]

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of satire?

Thank you. I can not believe the number of posters that look at this like it is a real article instead of what it really is...making fun of those that think Bush was behind 9/11. I guess looking at sources and thinking is something new for some.

[rlmorel]

I would have to agree with another poster, who in all seriousness mentioned the blurring of reality.

For good satire to be...well...satire, it must in some way be indistinguishable from reality. Personally, I am well aware of, and recognizant of satire. The problem is that in todays world, satire is often indistinguishable from reality.

In this case, take the the guy in the article dropping firecrackers on a wooden boat to illustrate his point. Can anyone, with a straight face, tell me that is not something that is not only easily imaginable in some quarters of society, but actually has direct analogs?

There is a well known guy who gets up in front of people and shows the 9/11 buildings falling while using his pointer to focus on areas in the video that he thinks are special charges planted to bring down the buildings. This is not satire. It is reality. In a sane world, yes. But this is not a sane world. In a sane world, there would not be leaders of countries announcing their opinion that the Holocaust was a sham, a media creation.

If you put up satire that had content describing President Bush eating Arabic babies as lunch, we *might* recognize that as satire. However, there are some people in the world where that might be put accepted as a valid and truthful observation.

Such as the liberal arm of American politics in the USA.
(The last line was semi-satire, by the way...)

[NonZeroSum]

In this case, take the the guy in the article dropping firecrackers on a wooden boat to illustrate his point. Can anyone, with a straight face, tell me that is not something that is not only easily imaginable in some quarters of society, but actually has direct analogs?

That was exactly the point.