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To: aristeides
The change in the U.S. position re: modus vivendi to my knowledge was related to the obstinate position of the Japanese representatives and the further aggression of the Japanese in French Indo China. What evidence do you have that it is linked to any conspiracy theory? Hull's records and subsequent testimony do not support your intimations.

Fighting this revisionist conspiracy garbage is like cutting of the tentacles of a giant octopus. After all the allegations are destroyed by factual documentation, the conspirators keep coming up with new unsubstantiated, blue sky allegations. Doesn't that fact that all your wild conspiracy "facts" have been debunked tell you something?

88 posted on 11/06/2001 6:46:09 PM PST by pjhoward
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To: pjhoward; jamaksin
The change in the U.S. position re: modus vivendi to my knowledge was related to the obstinate position of the Japanese representatives and the further aggression of the Japanese in French Indo China.

What "further aggression" in French Indo China are you talking about? The Japanese had already moved into the south of Indochina in the summer of 1941 -- that was what provoked the cutoff of oil to Japan. It's true that they moved further troops into Indochina -- they were preparing for the possibility of war -- but it's hard for me to see how such troop movements could be said to constitute "further aggression," any more than our own troop movements in countries where we have the government's consent for their presence (in, say, Pakistan) could be said to constitute aggression. If anything, that sort of thing means you should negotiate harder. Troop movements threatening the possibility of military action are a standard instrument of diplomacy, and hardly "aggression."

As for the Japanese diplomats' "obstinate position," again, I have no idea what you're talking about. Of course they were bargaining, and resisted some changes in their position. That's diplomacy. Until the sudden U.S. change of negotiating position, everything seemed to indicate that a modus vivendi that would at least have postponed war for several months was being successfully negotiated. It was the sudden U.S. change of position, demanding things that we had to know the Japanese would reject, that scuttled any chance of a successful negotiation. It seems to me that it was not the Japanese side that was "obstinate" in the negotiations.

I'd have to reread Stinnett with your criticms in mind to be able to judge your criticisms, and I do not have time to do that now. But, even in the absence of hard evidence, there's far too much circumstantial evidence for the conspiracy theory for me to reject it even if Stinnett has not found the smoking gun, which, when I read him, I thought he had. By the way, I too am a trained military cryptologist -- I was almost four years on active duty in Air Force signals intelligence, and over ten years in the Naval Reserve equivalent.

90 posted on 11/07/2001 1:49:23 AM PST by aristeides
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