The Independent is reporting that an FBI insider, Sibel Edmonds, has said that the Bush administration knew about the 911 attacks before they happened. The Bush Administration used a law to silence her and keep her out of the US press. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=507514 'I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes' Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 02 April 2004 A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened. She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie". Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege". She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily." She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used _ but not specifically about how they would be used _ and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities _ with skyscrapers." The accusations from Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who speaks Azerbaijani, Farsi, Turkish and English, will reignite the controversy over whether the administration ignored warnings about al-Qa'ida. That controversy was sparked most recently by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official, who has accused the administration of ignoring his warnings. The issue _ what the administration knew and when _ is central to the investigation by the 9/11 Commission, which has been hearing testimony in public and private from government officials, intelligence officials and secret sources. Earlier this week, the White House made a U-turn when it said that Ms Rice would appear in public before the commission to answer questions. Mr Bush and his deputy, Dick Cheney, will also be questioned in a closed-door session. Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps. She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission _ 90 per cent of it _ related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well." "President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away. To try to refute Mr Clarke's accusations, Ms Rice said the administration did take steps to counter al-Qa'ida. But in an opinion piece in The Washington Post on 22 March, Ms Rice wrote: "Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack planes to try and free US-held terrorists." Mrs Edmonds said that by using the word "we", Ms Rice told an "outrageous lie". She said: "Rice says 'we' not 'I'. That would include all people from the FBI, the CIA and DIA [Defence Intelligence Agency]. I am saying that is impossible." It is impossible at this stage to verify Mrs Edmonds' claims. However, some senior US senators testified to her credibility in 2002 when she went public with separate allegations relating to alleged incompetence and corruption within the FBI's translation department. --------------------------- Well that's interesting certainly. Another thing that always bothers me is trying to understand why Bush did not scramble fighters after it was apparent the planes were hijacked. That is standard policy, if not law. In fact, they only need Bush's approval to shoot them down. Judge for yourself on this article: http://www.narconews.com/goff1.html The relevant bit is this: "I have no idea why people aren't asking some very specific questions about the actions of Bush and company on the day of the attacks. Follow along: Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plans, all the while on FAA radar. The planes are all hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time. Who is notified? This is an event already that is unprecedented. But the President is not notified and going to a Florida elementary school to hear children read. By around 8:15 AM, it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handing teachers. By 8:45, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the World Trade Center, Bush is settling in with children for his photo ops at Booker Elementary. Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously, an event never before seen in history, and one has just dived into the worlds best know twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal Commander in Chief. No one has apparently scrambled any Air Force interceptors either. At 9:03, United Flight 175 crashes into the remaining World Trade Center building. At 9:05, Andrew Card, the Presidential Chief of Staff whispers to George W. Bush. Bush "briefly turns somber" according to reporters. Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No. He resumes listening to second graders read about a little girl's pet ****ing goat, and continues this banality even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington DC. Has he instructed Chief of Staff Card to scramble the Air Force? No. An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a public statement telling the United States what they already have figured out; that there's been an attack by hijacked planes on the World Trade Center. There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No. At 9:30, when he makes his announcement, American Flight 77 is still ten minutes from its target, the Pentagon. The Administration will later claim they had no way of knowing that the Pentagon might be a target, and that they thought Flight 77 was headed to the White House, but the fact is that the plane has already flown South and past the White House no-fly zone, and is in fact tearing through the sky at over 400 nauts. At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees over the Pentagon, all the while being tracked by radar, and the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC. Now, the real kicker: A pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral, descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the side of this building at 460 nauts. When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first drive on I-40 at rush hour by buying her a video driving game. It's horse ****! There is a story being constructed about these events. My crystal ball is not working today, so I can't say why. But at the least, this so-called Commander-in-Chief and his staff that we are all supposed to follow blindly into some ill-defined war on terrorism is criminally negligent or unspeakably stupid. And at the worst, if more is known or was known, and there is an effort to conceal the facts, there is a criminal conspiracy going on." --------------------------- Well, take it as you may but I find this stuff facinating. While I don't necessarily believe the sources yet, I find myself not having too much trouble believing this is possible. And that's frightening in itself. Why were the fighters not sent up? Note that if you google a bit you ca find other retired military personnel that are really curious why "standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking" was not followed. Judge for yourself, I'm merely fueling the fire...
You need to retitle this thread. No one would care to click on this with the current title. How about: Condeleeza Rice - outrageous liar claims FBI whistleblower. White House attempts to spike whistleblower.
although im still skeptical about this particular whistle blower until more information is released, even if a signed letter from Osama to Bush, telling him about his plan on 9/11 and postmarked months beforehand, was pictured on the front of TIME magazine, most people would still support Bush and would not change their minds. Likewise, and im sure some of the bush supporters would say this, even if we found WMDs and evidence that Saddam was going to nuke several major cities in the world, most of the people against the war would still be against the war.
nyquil82, From all evidence presented, it is apparent that there never were WMD's after 1991 and the Bushies knew that beforehand. It's not a valid comparison. The program to stop the proliferation of nuclear waste from the former Eastern bloc countries was killed by the Bushies. They never considered terrorism a big threat, there's no other explanation for stopping that program, the potential for dirty bombs is more scary than anything Saddam ever had.
From the chronicle this morning, more evidence: April 4, 2004, 11:24PM Report: President eyed Iraq after 9/11 Ex-British envoy details Blair talks Associated Press RESOURCES Current time in Baghdad: 4:21 p.m. Monday Video: • Bremer condemns killings of Americans / 4/1 • Insurgents attack Iraqi minister's convoy / 3/29 • French lawyer says he will defend Saddam / 3/27 • Violence in Mosul and Baghdad / 3/27 • Doctor: Iraqis killed in Fallujah fighting / 3/26 • Marchers protest war in Iraq / 3/20 • Powell: U.S. to probe diverted Iraq aid / 3/20 • Arab journalists walk out of Powell news conference / 3/19 • Explosions heard in Baghdad / 3/19 • Iraqi residents capture Basra suspects / 3/18 • Iraqis inspect Baghdad bomb site / 3/18 Multimedia: • Iraq: A year of war • Iraq: One Year • Saddam's hideout • Iraq profile • Reconstructing Iraq (Requires Flash plug-in) Photo galleries: • Iraqis attack U.S. contractors, parade corpses (Warning: Graphic content) • Saddam Hussein caught HOT TOPIC • AMERICA IN IRAQ: Complete coverage Video courtesy The AP; (Free Real Player required.) (PDF files require Acrobat Reader.) LONDON -- President Bush made clear at a dinner with Prime Minister Tony Blair nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks that he wanted to confront Iraq, the former British ambassador to the United States reportedly told a magazine. The president raised Iraq at a White House meeting on Sept. 20, 2001, Christopher Meyer, the former envoy, told Vanity Fair. The magazine, published in New York, released an advance copy of its story on Sunday. "Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq," Meyer, who attended the dinner, reportedly said. "On the one hand, Blair came with a very strong message -- don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban." "Bush said, `I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq,' " Meyer said, according to Vanity Fair. Meyer's statements appear to echo claims by Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief who said Bush was preoccupied with Iraq before and after the terror attacks at the expense of fighting al-Qaida. Clarke, whose book Against All Enemies and public testimony have ignited a political storm in Washington, said Bush pressed him the day after the attacks to establish a link to Iraq. The White House has dismissed Clarke's allegations, saying Iraq was considered one of many possible terror threats and that in planning retaliation for Sept. 11, a map of Afghanistan, not Iraq, was put on a table at Camp David. A spokesman in Blair's office declined to specify whether the two leaders discussed Iraq at the Sept. 20 meeting or give any details of the dinner. "The focus of discussions post 9/11 was on the need to take action against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, but Iraq has been a foreign policy priority for many years and would have been discussed by the two leaders at most meetings," an official in Blair's office said on condition of anonymity. He said Blair did not decide to go to war then. The Vanity Fair article, quoting an unidentified White House official, alleged that Bush and Blair discussed clear plans to topple Saddam Hussein in the summer of 2002 and that Blair misled his Cabinet by insisting for months that he had not made a decision to fight. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/headline/world/2486165
Sorry about the excess stuff at the top of the article -- stupid cut and paste.... nyquil82 -- What you say is true. The apathy and ignorance is disgusting. I am really perturbed by the Goff article personally. Why has no one asked what the USAF was doing (or not doing) that morning? I don't think it makes much sense to assume it was an accident that no fighters scrambled. It was too obvious that the planes were hijacked and off course. What in the world was going on there? More on this: --------------------------------------------- http://www.propagandamatrix.com/051203atlanticcityfighters.html Atlantic City F-16 Fighters Were Eight Minutes Away From 9/11 Hijacked Planes North Jersey Media Group As two hijacked jetliners bore down on New York City's World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, two Air Force F-16 jet fighters were practicing bombing runs over an empty stretch of the Pine Barrens near Atlantic City. The F-16 pilots had no idea of the impending tragedy in Manhattan, just eight minutes away in their supersonic jets. Why? Why weren't they alerted? And even if they had been told about the hijackings, what could they have done? The jets weren't armed to shoot down another plane. Their mission was bombing drills. Why? Those questions and others loom at the heart of an even larger mystery: How could America's elaborate air defense system of satellites, radar, and supersonic fighters be caught so off-guard on Sept. 11? The mystery is now at the center of one of the most secret - and politically explosive - investigations being conducted by the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission. Led by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States is analyzing almost every corner of the Sept. 11 tragedy, from skyscraper escape procedures to what the White House knew about terrorist threats and how well the FBI and CIA cooperated. On Monday, the commission plans to hold another public hearing in Washington, this one focusing on homeland security and personal liberty. But one investigation that has not drawn much attention involves air defenses. This is especially important to New Jersey. For almost a half-century, the state Air National Guard's 177th Fighter Wing, based at Atlantic City International Airport in Pomona, had been a key part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD. The command runs radar sites and monitors fighter squadrons assigned to protect the United States and Canada from attack, and from unauthorized flights by drug smugglers and undocumented immigrants. Under NORAD procedures that date to the Cold War, two F-16 fighters from the 177th were parked around the clock on the Atlantic City runway. Pilots waited in a nearby building, ready to scramble. But the 177th's jets were not on alert Sept. 11. A series of Pentagon cutbacks, beginning in 1998, changed the wing's mission from scramble-ready status to dropping bombs on enemy positions. In 2000, after two years of training, the 177th was even sent to Saudi Arabia to fly patrols over southern Iraq as part of Operation Southern Watch. By Sept. 11, the unit was back in New Jersey - but still training to bomb enemy targets overseas. A spokeswoman for the 177th confirmed that two of its F-16s were flying unarmed bombing runs that morning over a section of the Pine Barrens designated for military drills. But the F-16 pilots, she said, were unaware that America's air defense system needed them desperately. "Isn't that something?" asked Lt. Luz Aponte, the 177th's public affairs officer, pointing out the irony of having jet fighters so near to the tragedy but with a mission so far afield. Soon after two hijacked commercial jetliners slammed into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan, Aponte said, the two F-16s landed and were refitted with air-to-air missiles, then sent aloft. But that happened more than an hour after the trade center attacks. Such irony - and tragedy - is not lost on the commission. "We want to know why the jets at Pomona were decommissioned," said John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general now on the commission's Manhattan staff. An even larger concern is why fighters at other Air Force bases were not scrambled fast enough to protect New York City after the Federal Aviation Administration learned about the hijackings. "That's a big question," Kean said in a recent interview. Overshadowed in recent weeks by the much publicized - and also highly political - battle between the commission and the White House over access to intelligence data, the investigation of air-defense flaws could nonetheless become stormy next year, with accusations that the Clinton administration cut too deeply into Pentagon budgets during the 1990s or that the Bush administration reacted too slowly to the looming threat of terrorism. The commission has rescheduled a hearing to delve into air defense questions, from mid-January to early March, so investigators can have more time to go through records and other information recently received from NORAD and the Federal Aviation Administration in special subpoenas. NORAD has turned over more than 1,000 documents, some of which contain more than 150 pages, said Lt. Col. Rob Garza, a spokesman. Garza said the information comes from "bases around the nation" and includes transcripts of radio transmissions between pilots. He would not confirm what information - if any - NORAD provided from the New Jersey's 177th Fighter Wing. Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg also declined to comment on what - if any - conclusions might be drawn from the information pouring into commission offices in Washington and New York. He said commission staffers were still assessing what they had received from NORAD - and what its effect might be on the overall investigation of air defenses. But interviews with commission staffers, NORAD officials, and others, as well as checks of some records made public, already point to some intriguing revelations. NORAD confirmed it had only eight fighters on the East Coast for emergency scrambles on Sept. 11. Throughout Canada and the United States, including Alaska, NORAD had 20 fighters on alert - armed, fueled up, and ready to fly in minutes. Four years earlier, NORAD could count on having 175 jets ready to scramble, including two on the tarmac at Atlantic City's airport. With the New Jersey Air National Guard's 17 F-16s out of the picture on Sept. 11, the commission is trying to assess why the Pentagon left what seems to be a yawning gap in the midsection of its air defenses on the East Coast - a gap with New York City at the center. Since Sept. 11, the 177th has been back on alert status, with its pilots logging hundreds of hours of patrols above New York City and along the East Coast. NORAD also has confirmed it was running two mock drills on Sept. 11 at various radar sites and command centers in the United States and Canada, including Air Force bases in upstate New York, Florida, Washington, and Alaska. One drill, Operation Vigilant Guardian, began a week before Sept. 11 and reflected a Cold War mind-set: Participants practiced for an attack across the North Pole by Russian forces. A NORAD spokesman noted, however, that the drills might have helped the command gear up quickly to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks because its command posts were already staffed. "It was quite fortuitous," said Maj. Douglas Martin of the Canadian Army and spokesman at NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo. "The toughest thing for anyone is that we're using Sept. 12 eyes to dissect Sept. 11," he added. "No one is using Sept. 11 eyes." Investigators at the Sept. 11 commission confirm they are investigating whether NORAD's attention was drawn in one direction - toward the North Pole - while the hijackings came from an entirely different direction. "We are pursing this area very, very diligently," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor who is one of 10 members of Kean's bipartisan commission. NORAD is not the only target, however. The commission is also looking into why it took about 20 minutes for civilian air traffic controllers to notify NORAD of the hijackings. "We are in the process of interviewing pilots," a commission staffer said. Even after learning of the hijackings, it took six minutes for NORAD to order F-15 fighters into the sky from Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod - the "alert" base nearest to New York. After that, it took another six minutes for the jets to roar down the runway. Then it took the jets 19 minutes to reach New York, raising this question: Did they fly at full throttle? At a top speed of almost 1,200 mph, an F-15 can reach Manhattan from Cape Cod in less than 12 minutes, NORAD says. Why did it take 19 minutes? By then, it was too late. ------------------------------------- http://www.propagandamatrix.com/110903usafbases.html 35 USAF Bases Within Range On 911: The 7 Air Stations On Full Alert Covering The Continental United States And 28 More Air Stations That Were In Range Of The 4 Airliners On 911 StandDown.net The following list were the seven Air Stations that were armed and on full alert to protect the continental United States on Tuesday September 11, 2001. The Air National Guard exclusively performs the air sovereignty mission in the continental United States, and those units fall under the control of the 1st Air Force based at Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB) in Panama City, Florida. The Air National Guard maintains seven alert sites with 14 fully armed fighters and pilots on call around the clock. Besides Tyndall AFB, alert birds also sit armed and ready at; Homestead Air Reserve Base (ARB), Homestead, Florida; Langley AFB, Hampton, Virginia; Otis Air National Guard (ANG), Falmouth, Massachusetts; Oregon ANG, Portland, Oregon; March ARB, Riverside, California; and Ellington ANG, Houston, Texas. http://www.af.mil/news/airman/1299/home2.htm Beside the 7 Air Station on full alert covering the continental United States, here are 28 more Air stations that could have done something -- if they were left to do their job. The following happened on September 11, 2001; At 10:01 a.m. the FAA ordered the 180th Fighter Wing out of Swanton, Ohio to scramble their F-16 fighters. Although the base has no fighters on stand-by alert status, it manages to put fighters in the air 16 minutes later, a "phenomenal" response time - but still 11 minutes after the last hijacked plane has crashed. One interesting aspect is that NORAD has explained that it didn't scramble fighters from bases nearer to the hijacked planes because they only used bases in the NORAD defensive network. Yet the 180th Fighter Wing out of Swanton, Ohio wasn't part of that network, so why weren't planes at other bases scrambled at 8:20 or 8:40 or 8:43 or 8:46:26 or 9:02:54 or 9:24 or at the very least at 9:37? Maybe some of these Air station could have managed to get fighters up just as fast as the 180th Fighter Wing. Why weren't they? Stand Down. Andrews AFB 11 miles SE of Washington D.C. Bolling AFB 3 miles south of US Capitol Dover AFB Dover, DE Hanscom AFB 17 miles northwest of Boston, MA McGuire AFB 18 miles southeast of Trenton, NJ Wright-Patterson AFB Dayton, OH Cape Cod, MA AFS New Boston, NH AFS Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Bases Atlantic City Airport, NJ 10 miles west of Atlantic City Barnes Municipal Airport, MA 3 miles northwest of Westfield Bradley International Airport, CN Windsor Locks Byrd Field, VA 4 miles southeast of Richmond Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport 4 miles south of Martinsburg Frances S. Gabreski Airport, NY Westhampton Beach Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, PA 15 miles nw of Pittsburgh Harrisburg International Airport, PA 10 miles east of Harrisburg Martin State Airport, MD 8 miles east of Baltimore New Castle County Airport, DE 5 miles south of Wilmington Pease ANGS, NH Portsmouth Quonset State Airport, RI Providence Rickenbacker ANGB, OH Columbus, Oh Stewart International Airport, NY Newburgh, NY Toledo Express Airport, Swanton, Ohio Westover ARB, MA 5 miles northeast of Chicopee Willow Grove Naval Air Station, PA 14 miles north of Philadelphia Yeager Airport, WVA 4 miles northeast of Charleston Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport ARS, OH 16 miles north of Youngstown Also, there is an Air Defense Intercept Zone just off shore for the entire Atlantic Coast. This zone is constantly being patrolled. In general fast movers would not need to be scrambled. They can be diverted from routine patrol and training flights for the intercept. The odds are that on a beautiful blue morning in September many flights would be on patrol just off shore. It would be most improbable that even one commercial flight could go more than fifteen minutes without being intercepted. Source: http://www.af.mil/sites/alphabetical.shtml#a ---------------------------------- Someone tell me why this is not garnering more attention?!?! --rhad
Whenever I post info like this I get labeled a leftist lunatic. Which makes me proud. But at least people can see for themselves that I'm just repeating facts. When, uh, that famous golfer from a few years ago (Payton something? maybe?)....his plane went off course; fighter jets were scrambled in minutes, as per doctrine (SOP, standard operating procedure). On 9/11, it took us 1.25 hrs to scramble fighters. I'm not saying I have the answers. But there are more than a few questions.
I don't know what's worse: that the Bush Administration *knew* an attack was coming and didn't even attempt to prevent it, or that Americans aren't rioting in front of the White House because of it. Either way, it's pretty damn scary.
It's a hell of a thing. I don't even want to get into how bizarre it was that Bush was "unable" to take any kind of action until after the 2nd plane hit the WTC. And that no one, apparently, was willing to tell him that it was an emergency and he needed to leave that classroom ASAP. Or that he just might have figured that out for himself. What I was wondering was why couldn't the 2 F-16's which were already in the air, minutes away practicing bombing runs, have jettisoned their practice bombs and flown to investigate the Pentagon plane, armed or not? They might have been able to do something. Perhaps they didn't have enough fuel. Beats me. I'd still like to know the reason why that wasn't attempted. Reading a timeline like that, and assuming it's accurate, is enough to drive you crazy. So many missed opportunities, such poor, indecisive leadership... starting at the top.
It's all kind of sad, and makes me angry. I don't know what went down, or who was in the know. SOMEBODY knew what was gonna happen (just as FDR needed Pearl Harbor). EVERY seismic shift in foreign policy has needed a cataclismic event. I'm not saying GWB knew, but someone close to the administration did, and George was off on the ranch for the month. By the way, on September 4, 2001, Jeb Bush activated the Florida national guard due to undefined terrorist threats. Which state was that classroom in, where George kept reading about a goat to kids, knowing his country was under attack, on 9/11/01? Yep. Just something for the conspiracy theorists.
FYI: FDR knew about Pearl Harbor. The U.S. code crackers had broken the Japanese Imperial Navy code well before the attack. FDR then goaded the japanese to war be demanding a remission of the axis pact and a complete japanese withdrawal from china. Without the resources from China the japanese war machine would have completely collapsed. Therefore, the only rational alternative the japanese had was to attack first and cripple the U.S. in the pacific, just as FDR foresaw. FDR also ignored Prince Konoye in the critical 1940-1941 era in Japan. Konoye seeked a meeting with FDR as he was desperately seeking his support to push the war-hawks out. Konoye even praposed a japanese pull-out of manchuria and a reduced presence in China in exchange for a stop in the U.S. embargo. FDR refused under the influence of soviet sympathizers in his government pushing a "united front against facism." The truth is never as simple as it seems. Read and think.
I know I know...massive case of thread necromancy...but it's prudent, I swear! link I don't agree with the bolded bit - it's a de-facto after-the-fact rationalization intended to excuse higher ups for ignoring what should have been plainly obvious threats. E.g., at a certain point, FDR calculated the risk/rewards and intentionally goaded a Japanese attack, knowing full well the potential consequences. Now we see some more evidence that this was a conceived plan of sorts. Arguably, Sibel Edmonds provides similar proof of such nefarious scheming in regards to 9/11. Very disconcerting...or not. Sadly I'm at the point where I expect these sorts of dealings.
"Bin Laden determined to strike within the US w/airplanes in next few weeks or months" = apple "Japan gathering intelligence on US!" = orange
No. In anticipation of open conflict with this country... If anything, the situation regarding Japan was more obvious, as explained in my post from 7 years ago.
Sorry but that qualifier doesn't mean much - Just like every play in football is theoretically drawn up to go for a touchdown, every bit of intelligence is gathered in anticipation of some conflict, be it open or otherwise. If you want to find a true analog, you'd have to find something like "Imperial Navy determined to launch carrier-based air attack on US Naval Base in the next few months" - you're conflating imminence of some form of armed conflict with Japan with specific intelligence about a specific attack on a specific target in a specific fashion (in 2001, one that had even been attacked before by the same people 8 years before.)
Well, I can play that game too. If you want to find an analog, you'd need to show me a dedicated Al-Queda war machine actively engaged in a campaign of conquest in resource rich arenas that you have actively opposed and antagonized. There obviously is an apple-orange difference here, but it's not in regards to the intelligence or what actions were taken on account of it. More importantly, each suggests the distasteful (note that this is not to imply it was necessarily evil or whatnot) idea that the risk was known and accepted as a means to an end.
More obviously Sam, there is far more than just this memo - the memo is actually analogous due to its vague nature. The release of the actual pre-pearl harbor cables in 1993 (many of which have been subsequently re-classified after Day of Deceit was published) indicated that the code was broken, and the Japanese did not maintain "strict radio silence" as every kids textbook typically claims. The attack was far more obvious than 9/11, period.
Not sure anymore. My actual objective (I think) was to lend more credence to the idea that sometimes things are more complex than the simplified soundbites carried forth by our political elite and amplified by the subservient media.
