Re: Pearl Harbor
Well, here is some stuff from Amazon that helps sort it out. There was a conspiracy, but not by Roosevelt--that's the right-wing version of reality spewed by Mage who doesn't know that he is being played for the fool with another Right-Woos-Left biased conspiracy theory attacking liberalism, secret elites, and big government. Not a radical left analysis at all, more like the John Birch Society. The actual conspiracy was by the military to hide its own misfeasance over the failure to deal with the content of the intercepts of Japanese messages and report them to Roosevelt. It was them and right-wing anticommunists who created the myth about Roosevelt knowing about Pearl Harbor in advance. Can anyone remember the old China Lobby? Can we say Chennault?
This is why it is so important to understand the concept of Right-Wing Populism. It is so easy for it to sound leftist. It is so easy to pick up the conspiracy theories generated by the political right and insert them into left discussions where they can do great damage before they get stomped out.
-Chip
===From Library Journal
By now everyone is aware that the worst of the Pearl Harbor tragedy might have been avoided if the United States had heeded the warnings more carefully and had had a little luck. Clausen adds to the picture by describing his high-level wartime mission to find the truth about the raid. Although he makes dramatic charges of laxness and organizational bungling, his overheated claims of outright malfeasance are neither new nor surprising. If the book adds little to the controversy, however, the wartime documents it reproduces make a useful addition to the Pearl Harbor literature. It is written in a fastidious, lawyerly fashion but is a nice supplement to Gordon Prange's classic At Dawn We Slept . Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/92; for other Pearl Harbor books, see "The Day of Infamy in Print," LJ 9/1/91, p. 206-07.--Ed.
- Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History Prog., Los Angeles Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
===Ingram
An reexamination of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, based on an original eight hundred-page report and hundreds of sworn affidavits, shows that the American military conspired to blame the attack on President Roosevelt and the civilian leadership. 60,000 first printing. BOMC. QPB. History Bk Club.
===Book Description
Now in paperback in time for the blockbuster movie-the only book to name fourteen men most responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor.
In 1944, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, knowing that high-ranking members of the military had falsely testified before the various bodies investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor, selected a then-unknown major by the name of Henry C. Clausen to undertake a new investigation. From November 1944 to September 1945, Clausen traveled more than 55,000 miles and interviewed over a hundred U.S. and British Army, Navy, and civilian personnel. He was given the authority to go anywhere and question anyone under oath, from enlisted personnel right up to George C. Marshall, the Chief of Staff. He ultimately presented an 800page report to Stimson-a report that revealed a massive operational failure by the United States to use the priceless signals intelligence that it had obtained months before Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor is the "final judgement"-the story behind Clausen's investigation and a blistering account of his conclusions.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org
> [mailto:lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org]On
> Behalf Of Chip Berlet
> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 7:15 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] "Knee-Jerk Anti-Imperialism" Re: Two Takes
>
>
> Hi,
>
> 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
> >
>
> ___________________________________
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>