Yep, something was coming but the USN was pretty sure is couldn’t be Pearl. Some have said FDR thought it would be the Phillipines.
Right, I compare it to looking at a jigsaw puzzle. After the fact- it is clear from looking at the box cover, that that piece is part of a cow and goes near the barn, etc. But you see Intelligence doesnt get the box art. And their puzzle is missing a dozen key pieces, and a dozen fake pieces have been tossed in to make things worse. So, you got a fuzzy white piece- sheep? Smoke from the chimney? Clouds?
Yeah, neither side knew what the other really meant.
Yeah- that something was coming. Not guided passenger jet attacks into the Twin Towers.
Exactly.
We did.
Well, they thought they were taking prudent steps to stop sabotage. They were wrong. Intelligence is not always smart.
And if our BBs had gotten to sea, they would have been sunk and not salvageable.
“Within three months most of the smaller ships and three of the battleships – the USS Pennsylvania, the USS Maryland, and the USS Tennessee – were either returned to service or refloated and steamed to the continental US for final repairs.”
After all, the Saudis are America’s friends and allies - heck, they even let the USA station troops there. No need to worry about a few Saudi citizens taking pilot training.
The closest example I can think of isn’t terrorist per se, but a coup d’état. With a twist. In Vietnam in 1963, Diệm and Nhu knew that some in the army were plotting a coup against them. Their brilliant scheme was to mount a fake coup to flush out the plotters and eliminate them. Instead, the soldiers assigned to mount the fake coup simply turned it into a real one, and that was the end of Diệm and Nhu.
The main problem – other than not knowing of exactly what was up – was that the various intelligence agencies do not like sharing with each other. By the end of 2001, some senior members of the intelligence community had started pushing for a more centralized system through which all info would be funneled.
I had a source – one of those senior members on a reliable talk radio program – but the host reorganized his website when he retired and I’ve not been able to find it again.
How is that NOT a declaration of war? Am I missing some diplomatic nuance?
"Hey @Dissonance, I don’t think we can come to an agreement anymore by talking to each other. Also, I am bombing your house and wrecking your ability to defend yourself. But, this is NOT a declaration of war! Just want to be clear about that. If you declare war then that’s on you and your doing. Best, @Whack-a-Mole "
Not being able to talk on agreed terms would describe, say, USA and Russia, USA and China, and multiple other situations which are not war. Surprisingly, for diplomatic language at least, it means exactly what it says - we are at an impasse and further discussion from our positions is. pointless.
Unfortunately, this couldn’t be any more incorrect.
First, the Japanese used many different codes during the war, of course. But mostly we talk about two codes. The diplomatic code Purple which was completely broken by the US, and in fact we could decode and read their encrypted messages faster than the diplomats.
The other well-known code was the Japanese navy code JN25 for communication and control which was introduced in June 1939. It wasn’t until 1941 that US codebreakers could even understand the basics of the structure of the code, but they were completely unable to read any of the messages themselves.
It’s actually much more complicated than this summary, but it’s a commonly believed myth that by Midway the US was “reading” IJN messages, similar to what we were doing with Purple, where in reality, they were trying to put together enough bits of a puzzle to attempt to guess what was happening.
Even by Midway, there were disagreements between Station Hypo in Hawaii and Station NEGAT Washington as to the target of the attack. This is where the famous ruse to prove the target was Midway came in. Not to convince Nimitz, but to convince Washington.
Even had the US been better at breaking codes before the way, these war plans would not have been sent by radio, rather, delivered in person or over landlines.
It wasn’t until after the war started that there was both enough radio traffic by the Japanese and resources for the US to allow the codebreakers to make more progress.
The 1999 bombings in Moscow, were at the very least allowed to happen by the FSB in order to trigger a war with Chechnya, and aid Putins rise to dictator (and quite likely just carried out directly by them, as a literal false flag operation)
So there a lot of blurred lines here. What is very common is you have some radical underground political organization carrying our acts of terror, and it turns our that actually the organization had been infiltrated from top to bottom with agents. And in fact the people who had been the most radical and pushing to carry our more violent acts were the ones who were working for the government. Where does letting acts of terror happen to protect your informant become letting them happen for political reasons?
Two examples of this that come to mind off the top of my head:
Various anti-tzarist revolutionaries, eg: Yevno Azef - Wikipedia
British agents in the various northern Irish terror organizations during the troubles: eg: Stakeknife - Wikipedia
I mean it’s definitely a blurred line. I mean if the informant is directly taking orders to carry out a specific attack, but it’s normally more complicated than that, they probably informed their handlers that the attack was going to happen, and they choose to let it happen. Is that protecting their informant or letting the attack happen for political reasons.
Seriously? It’s not diplomatic nuance, it’s how the English language works, and your example bears no relation whatsoever to the events that occurred. The 14-part message was actually a non-message, as the war warnings I’ve fully posted here clearly show:
“Chances of favorable outcome of negotiations with Japan very doubtful.”
“Negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days.”
"Negotiations with Japan appear to be terminated to all practical purposes with only the barest possibilities that the Japanese Government might come back and offer to continue. "
All the 14-part message stated was the blindingly obvious, that the negotiations that Japan had already stopped were stopped. What didn’t make it a declaration of war is that there was no declaration that a state of war now existed between Imperial Japan and the US. Again, no diplomatic nuance, that’s how language works.
This is the text of the Japanese declaration of war on the United States and the British Empire that was delivered by publishing it in Japanese newspapers 7 1/2 hours after Pearl Harbor had been bombed (and incidentally was republished on the 8th of every month the war went on). I’ll only quote the first two paragraphs, note how blindingly simple and specific the second sentence is, bolding mine:
We hereby declare War on the United States of America and the British Empire. The men and officers of Our Army and Navy shall do their utmost in prosecuting the war. Our public servants of various departments shall perform faithfully and diligently their respective duties; the entire nation with a united will shall mobilize their total strength so that nothing will miscarry in the attainment of Our war aims.
Could you not understand? The myth around the 14-part message is that it was a declaration of war that was supposed to be delivered as the bombs started falling. It wasn’t. It was a banal non-message saying nothing in long form. You’ve already been provided with the text of the actual declaration of war delivered by Japan via publication of it in Japanese newspapers 7 1/2 hours after the attack had occurred.
