According to the video, maximum strength Zantac does a good job of controlling heartburn in 30-60 minutes. I promised Cliff I’m done with 9/11 conspiracy theories– nothing new to say, really.
Richard, please go through the entire official conspiracy theory involving the 19 hijackers. I wish to learn it from someone who believes in it so firmly.
Recently there have been claims that several of the 19 named hijackers are still alive, and this apparently provable.
Could our government have made a mistake? Why don’t they rectify the error? Why not?
Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp, plus anyone else interested– The burden of proof is on those who make extraordinary claims, not on me. If you can prove something, do so.
The erroneous BBC report was debunked– by the BBC. This has been previously discussed here on One Utah. Like I wrote above, there is nothing new to say.
All of the news coverage of 911 I saw this year seemed to steer watchers into thinking that 911 conspiracies aren’t being taken seriously by anyone anymore. It’s over and everybody agrees with the honorable 911 commission, hand picked by “president” Bush.
Get over it Cliff. Being part of the “reality based community” isn’t getting you anywhere. Even Bill Maher outrightly discounts us “conspiracy theorists.” They make the realities and we must believe them. That’s the way it is going to come down.
Richard, you’re a smart guy, but they got you on a leash when it comes to 911.
Ethan; Then why is it you believe official conspiracies and not ones that have abundant evidence? There is very much obviously wrong with the official conspiracy theory.
Helicopters killed JFK? I have never heard that one. Seems you know about conspiracy than I. All I am after is a few simple answers from those with “authority” that they are refusing to give.
Are you a simple follower of authority? Does such a bearing make you more comfortable? Is your simple explanation of made for TV pablum, history channel behavior, making you feel all warm and cozy?
You can make fun of me all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I watch incarnations of your ideas constantly on TV.
JFK, RFK, Area 51, Vincent Foster, Moon landing, and on and on and on. I really love the shows.
But they’re only entertainment.
Like other political conspiracies of before, yours is undoubtedly rooted in a very real distrust of current American leadership and a passion for justice. I think that’s great.
So, since Richard won’t bite, why don’t you relate the “official conspiracy theory” as it has been described, as you believe it.
Should be at least as good as the History Channel there Ethan. Seriously, be your own Show right here. You could tape it for Youtube. Why not?
Who’s making fun of you? Defend your position. Say the words the admin has said, and tell the story, and see if you don’t sound kinda sorta stupid.
That said I’m keeping an open mind. You are my light, the way, to the shining Truth our imbecile prestwit can’t seem top articulate to me, and I wish only to believe like you so well do.
glenn– I promised Cliff I wouldn’t repeat myself on this subject. Every piece of so-called “evidence” for the MIHOP theory has been debunked well and thoroughly.
Oh Boy, now that’s something people can take to the bank Ethan. So I guess you got nuthin?
MIHOP? Debunked?, once again Richard by the PMBS? Nobody is arguing on purpose, the better mind is “letting it happen” Like Pearl Harbor, and then making good use of it.
Please relate the official conspiracy theory, we are starting over see? Whatsmatta? Don’t want repeat utter nonsense?
Get real boys, it’s just a matter of time. It’ll be great growing old with the likes of you around.
You still have not related any portion of the “official conspiracy theory” Ethan. Nor has Richard. Funny that. I guess all of it sounds like BS huh? I well say, can’t blame for not going into it.
It sounds patently ridiculous. For a moment, imagine you don’t believe the OCT(official conspiracy theory) say it out loud sometime, and then consider how far fetched it sounds. No different than the alternative theories. They all sound implausible. So now, why won’t you review?
So you believe that the “official conspiracy theory” is crap too then? 19 hijackers, most from Saudi,sponsored by a guy living in caves in Afgganistan, took over aircraft with boxcutters, and with very limited experience flew commercial aircraft into the towers at 575 MPH, after flying around undefended US metropolitan airspace for over 90 minutes.
You are right. Sounds like crap to me too.
That makes two of us. So given this, there has to be another explanation for what really happened. Just sayin, going on what you just stated.
Then, though the heat of the collision and ensuing fire, softened steel, and caused the buildings to collapse…and two days later Attas’ passport is found in the rubble INTACT, though there is no portion of a human body that isn’t completely burned, or larger than the size of a fingernail.
That is some passport, where can I get one? I would use it for a bumper on my Jeep.
Maybe I should have said fetch. Have you ever played fetch with a dog. If you pretend you’re throwing a stick, you can fool him at least once and watch him try to find it. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, I’m just pointing out the fact that most Americans will run after that stick again and again if anybody mentions the words, “conspiracy theory.” They just roll right over and get ready have their belly rubbed rather then admit to themselves that their government is so corrupt that they would kill their own people to accomplish a goal.
John Grisham has just been quoted as saying the Bushes are bad, bad people with evil intentions. Authors don’t say things like that lightly because they lose some of their readers.
There must be a new investigation of 911 that isn’t compromised by investigators with conflicts of interest and a poll recently done says 51% of Americans agree with that action. Maybe those Americans aren’t going to run after that fake stick after all.
Tell you what. Lets get a commission of honorable people this time and only spend as much money as they spent trying to GET Clinton in our courts, (70 million.) If they do that, we can all stop arguing and know what really happened with great confidence. Oh, but this time Bush will probably have to testify under oath without sitting on Dick Cheney’s lap.
glenn– Are you a sucker for every conspiracy theory? There was no advance warning of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor specifically. The government was convinced that war would most probably start with attacks in the Far East. That’s a fact.
Tell to Ph.D historian Mark Stoler, the only historian quoted in USA Today upon the 50 Anniversary of VE and VJ day. He taught us the prospects and the scuttlebutt in the History of US Foreign Relations class.
I’m sure you would enjoy his class. No one got better than a B. He is about the most erudite scholar I have ever studied under. These were not loose statements he compiled, but very well researched from released documents that most people never set eyes on. That’s history.
One wonders if Pearl was not allowed to happen so fully, would the American people have responded so? What’s more was it not convenient that the Germans declared war on the US 3 days after Pearl? What if they had not?
Do you imagine that it was a pure stroke of luck that all our carriers weren’t in Pearl that day? Wake up. Where do you think PNAC and our imbecile got their open brazen statements that America needed a “new” Pearl Harbor in order to meet the Muslim Terror Threat? It’s the MO Richard. Refer to Kissingers’ statements on soldiers, and their bearing. He should know, he sent more than a few to their dooms.
You are simply uninformed. Not saying you have not read, yet among historians this likely-hood of fore knowledge at Pearl, is well known.
Roosevelt was desperate to enter the war, while the public was not, in any way. It is the basic MO of US Imperialism since the historical benchmark of this era, 1898, and the conquest of the Spanish Empire by the US, on land and sea.
Richard are you a sucker for every authority based official conspiracy theory?The truth Richard, most of the how, and what for, and means of major historical events in not known to the public, nor is it ever. It is as in the military, on a “need to know” basis.
So, if PNAC was around in 1941 they would have been Roosevelt Democrats? Hah.
Nonsense is nonsense, even if it is 66 years old. From David Greenberg in Slate (emphasis added):
Among military men, isolationists, and FDR-haters, it became an article of faith that all along the president had been seeking a “back door” into World War II. He suppressed signs of the impending attack, it was claimed, because he reasoned that only a strike against American soil would unite the public behind his goal. This is the canard that so many books, in the decades since, have labored to prove.
…Over the years, historians dutifully exposed the flaws (and lies) in the revisionist arguments. Those arguments, like most conspiracy theories, had a kernel of truth. FDR certainly favored American intervention in the war, as had been obvious at least since his support for Lend-Lease in 1940. It’s also true that Kimmel and Short weren’t as well informed of Washington’s intelligence as they should have been. But the revisionists have never made the critical leap between motive and action. Most significant, no one ever produced credible evidence that Roosevelt knew the attack was coming. In fact, contemporaneous diaries and accounts show reactions of surprise among top officials.
You betray your lack of knowledge of military history by suggesting that the US aircraft carriers were deliberately saved while the battleships were sacrificed. Despite the British success at Taranto in November 1940, the conventional wisdom at the time was that capital ships had little to fear from air attack. Battleships were considered far more valuable than carriers until the Pearl Harbor attack proved otherwise.
Well as kissinger would say, the military men wouldn’t know, it isn’t for them to know what the real plan is. You realize of course that this your superiors in the military way on up, have deceived the common soldier for the purpose they don’t know. Just like beasts to slaughter. Though most animals can sense it coming.
Theirs is not to reason why
Theirs is but to do and die.
Every war is planned through before any outbreak in hostilities.
EVERY war. So soldiers defend really nothing EVER, they carry a preconceived action, after being fed the oats and hay of propaganda. Works every time, all the time.
You are high Richard, everyone knew capital ships were done for well in the 30’s, one only had to look what happened to German and English battleships before Pearl Harbor to see that.
The future was in aircraft, the fact that there was a contingent that believed in battleships to that day, proves the folly of the entrenched military mind.
I will dig up the data for you, though, I’m busy this week. You could seek out Stolers’ take. He has his own website. google him.
glenn, I took your advice and here’s what I found. In the book Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies, 1933-1945 by Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler, historian Mark Stoler wrote (emphasis added):
Soon after World War II ended, some critics began to accuse Roosevelt not merely of poor diplomacy with respect to the Japanese, but of actually manipulating them into war by both encouraging and allowing them to attack Pearl Harbor. Basing the fleet three thousand miles from the U.S. mainland in Hawaii left it exposed and made it an obvious target, while the July freeze left the Japanese with no choice save surrender or war. Moreover, as a result of MAGIC the president knew about Japanese war plans in advance. He nevertheless allowed the Japanese attack to occur in order to open a “back door†to the full-scale war against Hitler that he now desired but that neither the German dictator nor the public would grant him.
The primary evidence for this conspiracy theory consists of the fact that, as previously noted, American cryptographers had broken the Japanese code and knew war was imminent. Yet this information was not shared with the army and navy commanders in Hawaii. Furthermore, no aircraft carriers, the most important naval weapon of World War II, were in Pearl Harbor on December 7—only dated battleships and smaller craft. The clear implication is that cryptographic intelligence revealed the Japanese war plan and that Roosevelt ordered his key capital ships out of the harbor while leaving the dated battleships as bait.
Although this thesis has been resurrected again and again over the last six decades, the actual historical evidence does not in any way support it.
I would only add a few minor points. MAGIC was an operation that decoded Japanese diplomatic messages. Americans didn’t break the Japanese naval code (JN–25) until January 1942. As far as I know, the breaking of the naval code was not revealed until 1974, when F.W. Winterbotham wrote his book The Ultra Secret. There is no way FDR would have had access to the plans of the Imperial Japanese Navy prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, and the postwar critics would not have been informed of the cracking of the JN-25 code anyway.
Another point– the information that war was imminent was definitely shared with the commanders in Hawaii. Admiral Kimmel and General Short were kept fully informed, but they made the mistake of assuming the Philippines would be attacked first.
Although aircraft carriers were indeed “most important naval weapon of World War II,” this was not known in 1941.
This Pearl Harbor discussion reminds me of a point I want to make. It’s fashionable to blame the Internet for fostering conspiracy theories. Well, the theories about the JFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, and the USS Maine pre-date the Internet, obviously. They keep coming back because uninformed people latch onto them as a seemingly logical explanation for chaotic events.
I think the Internet is the best tool yet for debunking conspiracy theories.
Well that is not what was discussed in class in 1982. As with most things, unless the evidence is irrefutable, an true academic historian will not put it in a book he writes.
His personal statements are other than this, with his own caveat that we really will never know.
Most often the first casualty of war is the truth, and I will go along with Bismarcks dictum.
“Never believe anything, until it is officially denied”
Richard, plenty of people knew capital ships were doomed by aircraft, and of course carriers…they just were never heeded by anyone in the entrenched professional military. Then again, battleship contracts made big money, and just like now, lot’s of things that flat don’t work, are being claimed as the best thing since sliced bread.
glenn– Even after Pearl Harbor, many clung to the fact that no capital ship had ever been sunk by air attack at sea. Then the Brits lost the Prince of Wales and the Repulse off Malaya. The Battle of the Coral Sea proved the value of aircraft carriers once and for all, the first naval battle in history where the ships of the opposing fleets never sighted one another. Then Midway proved the value of carriers again, conversely, because once the Japanese lost four of their carriers they lost the initiative for the rest of the Pacific war.
I’m with you on the Osprey, four times as expensive as a helicopter and a lot harder to fly. The squadron headed to Iraq right now is nicknamed the Thunder Chickens. I didn’t make that up.
Cliff Lyon
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:46 pm
According to the video, maximum strength Zantac does a good job of controlling heartburn in 30-60 minutes. I promised Cliff I’m done with 9/11 conspiracy theories– nothing new to say, really.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
They did it yea…but with voodoo.
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Since when is asking for evidence a conspiracy? I think you meant Xanex.
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Richard, please go through the entire official conspiracy theory involving the 19 hijackers. I wish to learn it from someone who believes in it so firmly.
Recently there have been claims that several of the 19 named hijackers are still alive, and this apparently provable.
Could our government have made a mistake? Why don’t they rectify the error? Why not?
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:32 am
Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp, plus anyone else interested– The burden of proof is on those who make extraordinary claims, not on me. If you can prove something, do so.
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:17 am
Well, there is the link, and it is sourced to the BBC. It’s not our baggage, but as Patriots, I guess we’ll carry it.
“For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and provide for it”.
Patrick Henry
So I guess you do not wish to review the “official conspiracy theory”
Knaack, knaack, whoop, whoop, whoop!!
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm
The erroneous BBC report was debunked– by the BBC. This has been previously discussed here on One Utah. Like I wrote above, there is nothing new to say.
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 pm
So who debunked it? Any reason you ‘aint telling? What a maroon!!
Not the PM bunk again Richard?!!! It’s a pretty leaky tent you’re under.
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:45 pm
All of the news coverage of 911 I saw this year seemed to steer watchers into thinking that 911 conspiracies aren’t being taken seriously by anyone anymore. It’s over and everybody agrees with the honorable 911 commission, hand picked by “president” Bush.
Get over it Cliff. Being part of the “reality based community” isn’t getting you anywhere. Even Bill Maher outrightly discounts us “conspiracy theorists.” They make the realities and we must believe them. That’s the way it is going to come down.
Richard, you’re a smart guy, but they got you on a leash when it comes to 911.
September 24th, 2007 at 11:45 am
From JFK to alien aircraft…
Conspiracies never pan out. Sorry.
The bright side: This topic will keep the History Channel busy for decades.
So that’s cool.
September 24th, 2007 at 11:52 am
This for Richard and Ethan. There are a few pros that don’t agree with the amatuers.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm
September 24th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Hey man, I watch the History Channel.
There are “pros” that jump on board with every conspiracy.
Scientists, former FBI agents…
They all line up.
But guess how many of them have been able to convince me that Bell Helicopters killed JFK?
September 24th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Ethan:
Roll over, play dead.
Atta boy!
Don’t worry. Be happy!
No new investigation of 911!
September 24th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Larry, I don’t get your joke.
September 24th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Ethan; Then why is it you believe official conspiracies and not ones that have abundant evidence? There is very much obviously wrong with the official conspiracy theory.
Helicopters killed JFK? I have never heard that one. Seems you know about conspiracy than I. All I am after is a few simple answers from those with “authority” that they are refusing to give.
Are you a simple follower of authority? Does such a bearing make you more comfortable? Is your simple explanation of made for TV pablum, history channel behavior, making you feel all warm and cozy?
That’s nice Ethan.
Please advise.
September 24th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
You can make fun of me all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I watch incarnations of your ideas constantly on TV.
JFK, RFK, Area 51, Vincent Foster, Moon landing, and on and on and on. I really love the shows.
But they’re only entertainment.
Like other political conspiracies of before, yours is undoubtedly rooted in a very real distrust of current American leadership and a passion for justice. I think that’s great.
But your 9/11 stories are just scapegoating.
September 24th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
So, since Richard won’t bite, why don’t you relate the “official conspiracy theory” as it has been described, as you believe it.
Should be at least as good as the History Channel there Ethan. Seriously, be your own Show right here. You could tape it for Youtube. Why not?
Who’s making fun of you? Defend your position. Say the words the admin has said, and tell the story, and see if you don’t sound kinda sorta stupid.
That said I’m keeping an open mind. You are my light, the way, to the shining Truth our imbecile prestwit can’t seem top articulate to me, and I wish only to believe like you so well do.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Well Glenn,
it’s not so much being the “light” for you
as it is knowing bullshit when I see it.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
glenn– I promised Cliff I wouldn’t repeat myself on this subject. Every piece of so-called “evidence” for the MIHOP theory has been debunked well and thoroughly.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Oh Boy, now that’s something people can take to the bank Ethan. So I guess you got nuthin?
MIHOP? Debunked?, once again Richard by the PMBS? Nobody is arguing on purpose, the better mind is “letting it happen” Like Pearl Harbor, and then making good use of it.
Please relate the official conspiracy theory, we are starting over see? Whatsmatta? Don’t want repeat utter nonsense?
Get real boys, it’s just a matter of time. It’ll be great growing old with the likes of you around.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Dude, Glenn. I’ve heard all this before.
It’s on History Channel constantly.
I’m not an internet researcher like you
but like I said… I know bullshit when I see it.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Oh uh huh. Me too.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Then what on Earth are you talking about?
September 24th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
That’d be your BULLSHIT Ethan!
September 24th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Of course, then again, it isn’t really yours, but something planted well inside, your very willing HEAD!
September 24th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Let’s see if your relating of the “official conspiracy theory” well matches that of your imagination, related to you by TV, and the Mystery Channel!
Your move.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Planted in my head? Is that another conspiracty… er pardon me… reality that I need to be aware of? I don’t remember the surgery.
Don’t knock the History Channel. They’re the only ones who give any air time to the conspiracies.
It’s great entertainment and they know it.
Outside the Internet, it’s the only conspiracy outlet.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
You still have not related any portion of the “official conspiracy theory” Ethan. Nor has Richard. Funny that. I guess all of it sounds like BS huh? I well say, can’t blame for not going into it.
It sounds patently ridiculous. For a moment, imagine you don’t believe the OCT(official conspiracy theory) say it out loud sometime, and then consider how far fetched it sounds. No different than the alternative theories. They all sound implausible. So now, why won’t you review?
Maybe there is hope for you.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
I read up on all the conspiracies and I think they’re crap.
I’m not interested in comparing the stories, just in saying I think the conspiracies are crap.
September 24th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
So you believe that the “official conspiracy theory” is crap too then? 19 hijackers, most from Saudi,sponsored by a guy living in caves in Afgganistan, took over aircraft with boxcutters, and with very limited experience flew commercial aircraft into the towers at 575 MPH, after flying around undefended US metropolitan airspace for over 90 minutes.
You are right. Sounds like crap to me too.
That makes two of us. So given this, there has to be another explanation for what really happened. Just sayin, going on what you just stated.
September 24th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Then, though the heat of the collision and ensuing fire, softened steel, and caused the buildings to collapse…and two days later Attas’ passport is found in the rubble INTACT, though there is no portion of a human body that isn’t completely burned, or larger than the size of a fingernail.
That is some passport, where can I get one? I would use it for a bumper on my Jeep.
Crap indeed.
September 25th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Ethan:
Maybe I should have said fetch. Have you ever played fetch with a dog. If you pretend you’re throwing a stick, you can fool him at least once and watch him try to find it. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, I’m just pointing out the fact that most Americans will run after that stick again and again if anybody mentions the words, “conspiracy theory.” They just roll right over and get ready have their belly rubbed rather then admit to themselves that their government is so corrupt that they would kill their own people to accomplish a goal.
John Grisham has just been quoted as saying the Bushes are bad, bad people with evil intentions. Authors don’t say things like that lightly because they lose some of their readers.
There must be a new investigation of 911 that isn’t compromised by investigators with conflicts of interest and a poll recently done says 51% of Americans agree with that action. Maybe those Americans aren’t going to run after that fake stick after all.
September 25th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Tell you what. Lets get a commission of honorable people this time and only spend as much money as they spent trying to GET Clinton in our courts, (70 million.) If they do that, we can all stop arguing and know what really happened with great confidence. Oh, but this time Bush will probably have to testify under oath without sitting on Dick Cheney’s lap.
September 25th, 2007 at 7:39 am
glenn– Are you a sucker for every conspiracy theory? There was no advance warning of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor specifically. The government was convinced that war would most probably start with attacks in the Far East. That’s a fact.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Tell to Ph.D historian Mark Stoler, the only historian quoted in USA Today upon the 50 Anniversary of VE and VJ day. He taught us the prospects and the scuttlebutt in the History of US Foreign Relations class.
I’m sure you would enjoy his class. No one got better than a B. He is about the most erudite scholar I have ever studied under. These were not loose statements he compiled, but very well researched from released documents that most people never set eyes on. That’s history.
One wonders if Pearl was not allowed to happen so fully, would the American people have responded so? What’s more was it not convenient that the Germans declared war on the US 3 days after Pearl? What if they had not?
Do you imagine that it was a pure stroke of luck that all our carriers weren’t in Pearl that day? Wake up. Where do you think PNAC and our imbecile got their open brazen statements that America needed a “new” Pearl Harbor in order to meet the Muslim Terror Threat? It’s the MO Richard. Refer to Kissingers’ statements on soldiers, and their bearing. He should know, he sent more than a few to their dooms.
You are simply uninformed. Not saying you have not read, yet among historians this likely-hood of fore knowledge at Pearl, is well known.
Roosevelt was desperate to enter the war, while the public was not, in any way. It is the basic MO of US Imperialism since the historical benchmark of this era, 1898, and the conquest of the Spanish Empire by the US, on land and sea.
Richard are you a sucker for every authority based official conspiracy theory?The truth Richard, most of the how, and what for, and means of major historical events in not known to the public, nor is it ever. It is as in the military, on a “need to know” basis.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:38 am
So, if PNAC was around in 1941 they would have been Roosevelt Democrats? Hah.
Nonsense is nonsense, even if it is 66 years old. From David Greenberg in Slate (emphasis added):
You betray your lack of knowledge of military history by suggesting that the US aircraft carriers were deliberately saved while the battleships were sacrificed. Despite the British success at Taranto in November 1940, the conventional wisdom at the time was that capital ships had little to fear from air attack. Battleships were considered far more valuable than carriers until the Pearl Harbor attack proved otherwise.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Well as kissinger would say, the military men wouldn’t know, it isn’t for them to know what the real plan is. You realize of course that this your superiors in the military way on up, have deceived the common soldier for the purpose they don’t know. Just like beasts to slaughter. Though most animals can sense it coming.
Theirs is not to reason why
Theirs is but to do and die.
Every war is planned through before any outbreak in hostilities.
EVERY war. So soldiers defend really nothing EVER, they carry a preconceived action, after being fed the oats and hay of propaganda. Works every time, all the time.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Greenburg is a politco! He can hardly be counted among academic historians Richard.
September 25th, 2007 at 10:11 am
glenn– If you think credible evidence exists that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance, where is it?
September 25th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
You are high Richard, everyone knew capital ships were done for well in the 30’s, one only had to look what happened to German and English battleships before Pearl Harbor to see that.
The future was in aircraft, the fact that there was a contingent that believed in battleships to that day, proves the folly of the entrenched military mind.
I will dig up the data for you, though, I’m busy this week. You could seek out Stolers’ take. He has his own website. google him.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:06 am
glenn, I took your advice and here’s what I found. In the book Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies, 1933-1945 by Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler, historian Mark Stoler wrote (emphasis added):
I would only add a few minor points. MAGIC was an operation that decoded Japanese diplomatic messages. Americans didn’t break the Japanese naval code (JN–25) until January 1942. As far as I know, the breaking of the naval code was not revealed until 1974, when F.W. Winterbotham wrote his book The Ultra Secret. There is no way FDR would have had access to the plans of the Imperial Japanese Navy prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, and the postwar critics would not have been informed of the cracking of the JN-25 code anyway.
Another point– the information that war was imminent was definitely shared with the commanders in Hawaii. Admiral Kimmel and General Short were kept fully informed, but they made the mistake of assuming the Philippines would be attacked first.
Although aircraft carriers were indeed “most important naval weapon of World War II,” this was not known in 1941.
September 26th, 2007 at 9:01 am
This Pearl Harbor discussion reminds me of a point I want to make. It’s fashionable to blame the Internet for fostering conspiracy theories. Well, the theories about the JFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, and the USS Maine pre-date the Internet, obviously. They keep coming back because uninformed people latch onto them as a seemingly logical explanation for chaotic events.
I think the Internet is the best tool yet for debunking conspiracy theories.
September 26th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Well that is not what was discussed in class in 1982. As with most things, unless the evidence is irrefutable, an true academic historian will not put it in a book he writes.
His personal statements are other than this, with his own caveat that we really will never know.
Most often the first casualty of war is the truth, and I will go along with Bismarcks dictum.
“Never believe anything, until it is officially denied”
September 26th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Richard, plenty of people knew capital ships were doomed by aircraft, and of course carriers…they just were never heeded by anyone in the entrenched professional military. Then again, battleship contracts made big money, and just like now, lot’s of things that flat don’t work, are being claimed as the best thing since sliced bread.
Osprey, e.g.
September 26th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Carriers were the future.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
glenn– Even after Pearl Harbor, many clung to the fact that no capital ship had ever been sunk by air attack at sea. Then the Brits lost the Prince of Wales and the Repulse off Malaya. The Battle of the Coral Sea proved the value of aircraft carriers once and for all, the first naval battle in history where the ships of the opposing fleets never sighted one another. Then Midway proved the value of carriers again, conversely, because once the Japanese lost four of their carriers they lost the initiative for the rest of the Pacific war.
I’m with you on the Osprey, four times as expensive as a helicopter and a lot harder to fly. The squadron headed to Iraq right now is nicknamed the Thunder Chickens. I didn’t make that up.