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To: Poohbah
Pearl Harbor could have been properly warned, and the damages significantly reduced and MANY, MANY lives spared, not to mention saving most of not all of the fleet, but hey, then the people might not have been angered enough to jump into the war.

This is where your argument implodes.

Which part of the above do you disagree with? Are you saying that the same damage and death would have occured even with plenty of warning? Not likely.

What is the timeline for your series of events? Did Pearl Harbor occur first? Had Pearl Harbor not occured but been prevented, perhaps the other events would have been averted as well. What we do KNOW is that Pearl Harbor did NOT have to happen. But, FDR and his cronies made sure that it would.

105 posted on 10/01/2002 2:50:09 PM PDT by ET(end tyranny)
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To: ET(end tyranny)
What is the timeline for your series of events? Did Pearl Harbor occur first?

Yes, but in some cases it was only a matter of hours.

Had Pearl Harbor not occured but been prevented, perhaps the other events would have been averted as well.

Hypothesis contrary to fact--the Japanese plans were going to go forward no matter what the outcome of the Hawaii Operation was. (Most Americans forget that Pearl Harbor was not the principle Japanese operation at the outset of the war--grabbing the East Indies and its oil was the decisive operation that dictated all else. Right up to the moment of its success, a sizable chunk of the Combined Fleet's flag staff thought the Hawaii Operation to be a waste of scarce carrier assets on a long-shot gamble, an attitude also held at Imperial General Headquarters.)

What we do KNOW is that Pearl Harbor did NOT have to happen. But, FDR and his cronies made sure that it would.

Actually, we don't, unless you're talking to doctrinaire FDR-hating cranks, who were in turn passed BS by some retired Navy brass in the early postwar era looking to cover up the Navy's dirty linen. The arguments advanced by these folks have only one teensy-weensy problem--they assume that the Department of the Navy's intelligence organs were working at peak efficiency. The facts on record make it very clear that (a) War Plans (RADM turner) was basically running his own intelligence shop (which was NOT his division's job) and actively interfering with all other intel efforts (including those conducted by the people who really DID have the intel job), (b) the Wegener brothers over in Navy Communications were cheerfully interfering with cryptographic and signals intelligence work work (this continued on well into the war), and (c) Admiral Stark did nothing to put an end to these shenanigans. In short, the Navy's intelligence gathering and analysis was broken by intramural feuding and empire-building.

108 posted on 10/01/2002 3:09:20 PM PDT by Poohbah
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