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The fleet at sea was supposed to have been on a war footing because we knew a Japanese attack in the Pacific was imminent, we didn't know where.

I used to believe in the revisionist version of Dec 7, 1941 until I realized just how incompetent an inefficient a government can be. 9/11 convinced me of that.

Copied to lbryce jamaskin and Talisker. Ref. my prior post to combat boots, re:actual orders.

I appreciate your comment on incompetence. But in this case it was deliberate.
The Brits had broken the jap code. Moreover they had the position of the jap fleet and target. FDR and Marshall knew it on 6DEC night. No longer any question on this.

“War footing” is one thing. It is not the same as “you are cleared to attack any japanese shipping encountered”...direct orders from ComSubPac, a week prior to any declaration of war and a supposed “surprise” attack.

To his dying day, my conservative father said FDR, and his lying pal Churchill deliberately “set us up”. Until the later declassifications proved him right, his opinion was unpopular. Set us up for a war, to answer FDR's piss poor continued domestic policy destruction of the US economy and perpetuation of the Depression. Answer: get rid of the potential workers out of work by sending them off to war. In much the same way this moron obama and his elitist democrat pals would love to destroy the US and substitute their statist dictatorship.

FDR even lost the peace for US (Tehran and Yalta compromised by Stalin's spies)in the world, after the loss of so many brave service people. And Churchill abandoned the Poles- the very reason they went to war, imagine that. Poles don't have to imagine it.