Cockburn indeed pursues this conspiracist fantasy about Pearl Harbor. The cites are almost always to Beard and Vidal; as was the case with our own Mage.
Bogus history percolates ineffective stategies for the future.
Mage jumps in with both feet with this gem:
"P.S. Assuming that it was GWBush who *personally*
ordered the stand down of US air defenses on 11/09/01,
what is your estimate of the likelihood that a
paper trail establishing that fact will be made
available to "most historians" sometime in the
next millenium?"
This piece of offal originated with the infamous essay:
GUILTY FOR 9-11: BUSH, RUMSFELD, MYERS Introduction & Section 1 by Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel
"On 11 September there were two entire squadrons of combat-ready fighter jets at Andrews. Their job was to protect the skies over Washington D.C. They failed to do their job. Despite over one hour's advance warning of a terrorist attack in progress, not a single Andrews fighter tried to protect the city."
Actually, the article mistakes the military term "combat ready" to mean jets that can scramble in a matter of minutes. Combat ready actually means the military unit has the people with proper trianing and equipment with proper maintenance to be sent into combat.
Despite mushrooming conspiracy articles about why aircraft were not scrambled from closer airfields on 9/11, the jets that did take off were from the routine assignment bases with scramble-ready interceptor aircraft -- Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod for NYC, (not McGuire AFB in NJ, etc.), and Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for Washington, DC. (not Andrews, etc.).
So there is not only no evidence that Bush "ordered the stand down of US air defenses" on 9/11, but the article which makes this claim begins with a basic failure to understand military terminology, and ends with a fallacy of logic, whereby Bush is accused of treason on the fallacious assumption that the events of 9/11 can only be explained by a conspiracy at the highest levels.
Yawn...
-Chip Berlet
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org
> [mailto:lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org]On
> Behalf Of Doug Henwood
> Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2003 5:56 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] "Knee-Jerk Anti-Imperialism" Re: Two Takes
>
>
> Chip Berlet wrote:
>
> >Most historians say this claim is simply bogus, because
> there is no evidence
> >linking the messages to any awareness by Roosevelt.
> >
> >Please name the sources you rely on for your assertion about
> FDR, other than
> >material circulated by the Institute for Historical Review.
>
> Doesn't Alexander Cockburn subscribe to some such reading of
> Pearl Harbor?
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>