The bomb used on japan twice

[ironglow]

From another perspective, if Japan had deployed a WMD, they would not have been permitted to surrender, and Japan as we know it today would not even exist.

Japan didn't have a 'weapon of mass destruction, other than some nerve gas like everyone else had... and that's no weapon of mass destruction, except in Dubya's brain. So far as delivery... an I-boat, with single-engined seaplane? they couldn't even start a forest fire with those things...So when did Dubya comment on Japan and their WMD production?  Dubya was born a year aftervthe war ended..

"The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was typical: ... ...

Got a linky to this. In my 8 year study of the Pacific War I've never seen or heard anything like this directly from the folks mentioned.

Then you've not looked very hard.  So here is mentioned 3 officers who may (ormay not have) disapproved of the nuclear demonstrations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki..that leaves how many thousand who did not disapprove of same ?

The Japanese were also working on a nuclear bomb and evidence found at an underground installation north of Honshu in 2006 shows that they were within weeks of having one.

That is utter hokum, 100% false. Japan had nowhere near the material resources or knowledge required to build a nuclear weapon - the Manhattan project cost the US a fortune. Japan couldn't even field a competitive fighter and maintain it in the field - nuclear weapons was far beyond their grasp. Utter fantasy that they were anywhere remotely near building nukes.  Not according to some historians who may just be a bit better informed on the subject, than is YT..

The plan was to load it in a sub, drive it into SanFrancisco Bay and detonate it in a Kamikasi attack. Had we not dropped ours when we did, history would be a lot different with a lot of US citizens dead.

Utter fairly tale, completely untrue. Where did you get that stuff? Provide a link or title?  us920669 is far more credible than Harry Ried!  At least he has some basis for his claim..unlike Dingy Harry..
   Check this out;
http://www.orau.org/ptp/articlesstories/u234.htm

[yellowtail3]

Ironglow wants to argue:

"The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was typical: ... ...

Got a linky to this. In my 8 year study of the Pacific War I've never seen or heard anything like this directly from the folks mentioned.

Then you've not looked very hard.  So here is mentioned 3 officers who may (ormay not have) disapproved of the nuclear demonstrations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki..

Is it your position that Leahy is misquoted?

Not according to some historians who may just be a bit better informed on the subject, than is YT..

I'd like to see the work of these some historians who may just be a bit better informed  than I, who... think Japan was a week from having a nuclear weapon. Could you reveal some names and perhaps provide a link or two? Thanks.

The plan was to load it in a sub, drive it into SanFrancisco Bay and detonate it in a Kamikasi attack.
Had we not dropped ours when we did, history would be a lot different with a lot of US citizens dead.

Utter fairly tale, completely untrue. Where did you
get that stuff? Provide a link or title?  us920669
is far more credible than Harry Ried!  At least he
has some basis for his claim..unlike Dingy Harry..

I don't thnk that us920669 ever made that far-fetched claim about a Jap sub carrying a (fictional) nuclear weapon to San Franciso.

[ironglow]

  OK ...so Larry  said it...Attacking the messenger doesn't change the message that Larry had more evidence to back his claim than Dingy Harry had to back his predatory lie..
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
 
  You have a very nebulous view of the Japanese Zero..For about 1.5 of the 4 years of war.. the Zero flew circles around our planes in a dogfight.  The "Zeke" carried 2 7.7mm MGS and 2 20mm cannons..enough to down any plane then flying.  It was a welcome accident which put a nearly fully intact Zero into our engineers hands in the Aleutian Islands in 1942..then our engineers designed the "Hellcat" our first fighter plane which could out dogfight and turn inside the Zero.
 
  Read the 2nd paragraph! Early on, the Zero carried a 12 to 1 kill ratio in air combat:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_A6M_Zero

[yellowtail3]

  OK ...so Larry  said it...Attacking the messenger doesn't change the message that Larry had more evidence to back his claim than Dingy Harry had to back his predatory lie..
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
  You have a very nebulous view of the Japanese Zero..For about 1.5 of the 4 years of war.. the Zero flew circles around our planes in a dogfight.  The "Zeke" carried 2 7.7mm MGS and 2 20mm cannons..enough to down any plane then flying.

Nebulous? Naw... well informed.
As I posted earlier, the Zero's success was due mainly to superior numbers, and poor tactics on part of the US/allied pilots, who tried to dogfight the thing - that is, a low-speed turning contest, as inWW1. That played to the Zero's strenghts, which were: low-speed turn, low-speed climb angle, and low-speed acceleration. And range. Otherwise... the US P-40 was quite competitive aircraft and in some respects - the ones that really mattered? - it was better. If the US pilot kept his speed up - and every model of the P-40 had a higher speed than corresponding mark of Zero - then the Zero's advantages disappeared. The Zero's manueverability was only at low speeds; at over 180 or so knots speeds a P-40 could outroll it (more important than turn rate, really) and could turn with it. As Zero approached its max speed, it could barely turn. The P-40 could ALWAYS out-dive the Zero, allowing it to disengage at will, and could always outrun it. So... the Zero wanted the fight to slow down, the P-40 jock wanted to keep speed up to play to his strengths. The P-40 was far tougher than the Zero, and could survive hits that would destroy the Jap fighter. That, and it had much better firepower with 2x.50/4x.30 in early models, and 6x.50 in later ones. The Zero had two rifle-caliber machine guns, and two 20mm with slow rate of fire and loopy trajectories.
Here you go: first-hand, from a guy who actually flew the P-40B against the Zero:
http://yarchive.net/mil/p40.html

It was a welcome accident which put a nearly fully intact Zero into our engineers hands in the Aleutian Islands in 1942..then our engineers designed the "Hellcat" our first fighter plane which could out dogfight and turn inside the Zero.

Not so, Ironglow - that's a myth. Koga's Zero had nothing to do with design of the Hellcat, which was long-since approved and locked down - the first production models rolled off the line only two weeks (Oct '42) after the Navy first flew Koga's repaired Zero at North Island.
Also - that kill ratio you mentioned? By late 1942, less than 12 months after Pearl - at Guadalcanal, the Zero's kill ratio dropped under 1:1 against Cactus. Why? Tactic and training, mostly. Check out Lundstrom's The First Team and Bergerud's Fire in the Sky - they're both outstanding works.From there it spiraled downhill, as the Japanese couldn't maintain their planes, couldn't train replacement pilots, used poor tactics (no radios, poor team coord) and couldn't come up with better planes in significant numbers. Point is... the Japanese air arm was losing at the hands of the F4F and P-40, before we introduced 2nd generation fighters.

[45-70.gov]

those with the biggest guns and bombs


GET TO WRIGHT THE HISTORY BOOKS


weeken the military and some one else will write the history books

[us920669]

Henshall, the author of the book I cited, freely states that the evidence for a nuclear axis is circumstantial, but there is an awful lot of it and it points to a German program carried out in Asia, with Japanese cooperation of course.  Maybe Hitler got paranoid and ordered the thing be built on the other side of the world from where he lived.  I have never heard the Honshu Island claim and am curious about it too. As I have said, our leaders had far more reason to be worried about a bio-weapons attack. 
I tend to believe the high-end casualty predictions for Downfall.  If the bomb had been a dud, we may well have stuck with conventional bombing and blockade, but we would probably have gotten a communist Japan, vastly weakening our Cold War performance[size=78%].[/size]

The Zero book I read claimed that pilots hated the 20 m/m cannon, as it compromised the Zero's handling characteristics, its greatest strength.  I think it was just too much gun for that frame.  I always liked the P 40, rugged, fast and well-armed.  I guess I just figured that an in-line, water cooled airplane was automatically a clunker.   

[Curtis]

If the bomb had been a dud, we may well have stuck with conventional bombing and
blockade...............

I think I remember reading somewhere long ago that at least one plan was to go chemical on them had the nuke failed to go boom.  I do not know the plausibilty of that tale.
 
Curtis

[williamlayton]

Horses and Ox carts---
We used Mules, the Russians used Horses, the japanese used Horses and Ox, The British used Horses--the French used white sheets.
Folks--this was a time when Horses and Mules were in steady use in America. We had horses and a wagon when I was young--along with an old Caddilac my GFather made into a pick-up.
The Japanse were not backwards---they did not have the natural resources to be as industrial as America
The Japanese did not enter into the Haig agreements and felt no need to abide by them.
The Germans and Japanese did have Dirty Bombs but no way to deliver them to America.
The US had never planned an A Bomb attack on Tokyo---never--it was veboten and off limits. To crush the Emperor  would have been a mistake of mass stupidity and Truman knew it.
There is now known the targets for A Bombs to be used on the day of invasion---we would have lost countless thousands due to radiation and most probably the invasion.
Casualities ranged all over the place. I speculate it would have taken another two years to take all of Japan---Heck it took us 6 months to take a couple of Islands.
You cannot use nuclear weapons in conjunction with an invasion---Logistics 101.
THINK.
Blessings

[yellowtail3]

The Zero book I read claimed that pilots hated the 20 m/m cannon, as it compromised the Zero's handling characteristics, its greatest strength.  I think it was just too much gun for that frame.  I always liked the P 40, rugged, fast and well-armed.  I guess I just figured that an in-line, water cooled airplane was automatically a clunker.

The P-40 was not near as bad as it's been made out to be, in post-war lit. It certainly was a maneuverable a/c - at medium/low speeds, it could turn inside Mustang (or P-47) with no problem. It could do a split S in much less space than a P-38, and at over 275mph could out-turn, out-dive, out-roll and out-zoom climb the Zero... you just had to stick to its strong points, and never, never, NEVER get into a low-speed swirling dogfight with a Zero, or it was Sayanora!

I think the Zero was a beautiful aircraft, a brilliant design for what they had to work with in terms of a low-powered engine. I took these photos at Chino a year ago - it's the only Zero still flying with the orig Japanese Sakae engine. After restoring the the late 70s, it toured Japan.


Click photos for high-res versions

[Larry L]

[quote That is utter hokum, 100% false. Japan had nowhere near the material resources or knowledge required to build a nuclear weapon - the Manhattan project cost the US a fortune. Japan couldn't even field a competitive fighter and maintain it in the field - nuclear weapons was far beyond their grasp. Utter fantasy that they were anywhere remotely near building nukes.]


Wow, the utter ignorance of an intelligent statement. I can only suppose we are to assume you have a clue about history or is it history according to you? Thankfully, you're not teaching anybody. The Japanese not only had nuclear programs, according to this headline news article, they exploded one successfully. But then I guess the highly regarded newspaper of the day would have to be wrong for you to be right. I'll go with the newspaper, thank you.


[/quoteJapan Developed Atom Bomb;
Russia Grabbed ScientistsCopyright 1946 by the Atlanta Constitution and David Snell.Actual Test Was SuccessJapan developed and successfully tested an atomic bomb three days prior to the end of the war.She destroyed unfinished atomic bombs, secret papers and her atomic bomb plans only hours before the advance units of the Russian Army moved into Konan, Korea, site of the project.Japanese scientists who developed the bomb are now in Moscow, prisoners of the Russians. They were tortured by their captors seeking atomic "know-how."The Konan area is under rigid Russian control. They permit no American to visit the area. Once, even after the war, an American B-29 Superfortress en route to Konan was shot down by four Russian Yak fighters from nearby Hammung Airfield.I learned this information from a Japanese officer, who said he was in charge of counter intelligence at the Konan project before the fall of Japan. He gave names, dates, facts and figures on the Japanese atomic project, which I submitted to United States Army Intelligence in Seoul. The War Department is withholding much of the information. To protect the man that told me this story, and at the request of the Army, he is here given a pseudonym, Capt. Tsetusuo Wakabayashi.The story may throw light on Stalin's recent statement that America will not long have a monopoly on atomic weapons. Possibly also helps explains the stand taken by Henry A. Wallace. Perhaps also, it will help explain the heretofore unaccountable stalling of the Japanese in accepting our surrender terms as the Allies agreed to allow Hirohito to continue as puppet emperor. And perhaps it will throw light new light on the shooting down by the Russians of our B-29 on Aug. 29, 1945, in the Konan area.When told this story, I was an agent with the Twenty-Fourth Criminal Investigation Department, operating in Korea. I was able to interview Capt. Wakabayashi, not as an investigator or as a member of the armed forces, but as a newspaperman. He was advised and understood thoroughly, that he was speaking for publication.He was in Seoul, en route to Japan as a repatriate. The interview took place in a former Shinto temple on a mount overlooking Korea's capital city. The shrine had been converted into an hotel for transient Japanese en route to their homeland.Since V-J Day wisps of information have drifted into the hands of U.S. Army Intelligence of the existence of a gigantic and mystery-shrouded industrial project operated during the closing months of the war in a mountain vastness near the Northern Korean coastal city of Konan. It was near here that Japan's uranium supply was said to exist.This, the most complete account of activities at Konan to reach American ears, is believed to be the first time Japanese silence has been broken on the subject.In a cave in a mountain near Konan, men worked against time, in final assembly of genzai bakuden, Japan's name for the atomic bomb. It was August 10, 1945 (Japanese time), only four days after an atomic bomb flashed in the sky over Hiroshima, and five days before Japan surrendered.]

[yellowtail3]

That is utter hokum, 100% false. Japan had nowhere near the material resources or knowledge required to build a nuclear weapon - the Manhattan project cost the US a fortune. Japan couldn't even field a competitive fighter and maintain it in the field - nuclear weapons was far beyond their grasp. Utter fantasy that they were anywhere remotely near building nukes.

Wow, the utter ignorance of an intelligent statement. I can only suppose we are to assume you have a clue about history or is it history according to you?

Well... yeah, you should suppose that, in this case.

Thankfully, you're not teaching anybody.

I actually am teaching a class tomorrow, but it's medical/IT related, none of this stuff.

The Japanese not only had nuclear programs, according to this headline news article, they exploded one successfully.

No, they did not.

But then I guess the highly regarded newspaper of the day would have to be wrong for you to be right. I'll go with the newspaper, thank you.

Yeah, they were wrong, but you're welcome to believe what you want. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts - and in this case, the facts do not line up with your opinions.

[Hodr]

Kudos to WilliamLayton,
Every uncle on both sides of my family served in uniform in WWII with one exception.  MOS varied from navigator (B29) to crew chief (P51), to combat medic,(Ranger) to Marine, to bosun, Guns (yard mine sweeper) CID (quartermaster).  The exception was Uncle Ralph.  He married into the family and when the family held the meeting two days after Pearl Harbor they asked Uncle Ralph not to sign up.  Instead they signed all shares on 800 acres of Missouri land over to Ralph because he was the best farmer.  When I was 12 and we were visiting the farm dad grew up on, dad opened the pantry door and it was papered with awards for the most corn, hogs and mules produced in the state during the war.  My father said Uncle Ralph kept at least 10 men in the field every day of the war.  Uncle Ralph when I knew him had few teeth left, always wore bib overalls, and talked country.  Uncle Ralph never flew in a plane but his hogs were made into spam, his corn went to rations, and his mules for which he was truly famous were shipped to Africa, Asia, Pacific Islands, Borneo, Australia and Europe.  He was all farmer and the sheer scope of the work left him worn out and dead before he was 50. 
 
Hodr

[srussell]

thing is buy dropping the two  nukes.  we shorten the war. we were not going to get japan to surrender using conventional weapons. fire bombing was a true horror for civilians. but burning a city like that is one thing. but drop a nuke. just one bomb that kills a whole city in the blink of the eye is another. drop two bombs and wipe out two very large cities i think is what ended it. and yes saved countless lives on both sides

[Victor3]

 Having done a bit of study on what went into making our first few bombs, I can't hardly see how Japan could have cobbled one up.
 
 At its height, the US development effort required expendatures nearly equalling that of all our automotive factories combined.
 
 IIRC, I got that info from the most recent book I've read on the subject...
 
http://www.brotherhoodofthebomb.com/

[SHOOTALL]

To say that the attack on PH was un provoked is somewhat misleading. When you consider what Teddy R promised Japan then turned his back on them ( though congress did not even know about it ) might be considered provoking. I would suggest those intrested in more than the few days before the attack look back farther in time and see how Asia was being bid for by western powers in an effort to gain control of parts of Asian markets ansd raw materials.

[Dixie Dude]

We had two types of bombs developed.  One from U-235 at Oak Ridge, TN, and one from Plutonium developed at Hanford, WS.  It was expensive to seperate the U-235 from U-238 and to make Plutonium.  It took them a while to make them.  They made 4 and tested two at White Sands, NM.  We only had the two we used against Japan.  One more would have been ready by mid August.  We could only make about 3 each month.  So, if Russia didn't attack the Japanese in Manchuria and stayed out of the war, we would have dropped about 3 more in September and 3 more in October.  We wouldn't have been ready to invade Japan until November when we had transported most of the troops from Europe to Asia for the invasion.  With 8 bombs destroying 8 cities, plus the fire bombings, Japan wouldn't have had much left except caves to fight from. 

[BBF]

What I find interesting is that Russia a technical backward country that needed  all kinds of Lend-Lease War material was able to explode its own A bomb, in 1848 (I think ?).
 
 Is anyone familiar with Alger Hiss?

[yellowtail3]

To say that the attack on PH was un provoked is somewhat misleading.

quite true, but saying so might get you called a librul, or a comm'ninist, or even a Muslim....

[Curtis]

To say that the attack on PH was un provoked is somewhat misleading.

quite true, but saying so might get you called a librul, or a comm'ninist, or even a Muslim....

Provoked or not, it was their mistake.
 
Curtis

[hunt-m-up]

To say that the attack on PH was un provoked is somewhat misleading. When you consider what Teddy R promised Japan then turned his back on them ( though congress did not even know about it ) might be considered provoking. I would suggest those intrested in more than the few days before the attack look back farther in time and see how Asia was being bid for by western powers in an effort to gain control of parts of Asian markets ansd raw materials.

If your neighbor says he doesn't like you and says he's going to buy every house surrounding yours, do you firebomb his house? A few might, but most would not see any rational justification in that. The supposed provocation here does not seem to warrant the destruction of  a military base at Pearl Harbor and killing people.

[SHOOTALL]

hunt m up , do you know what had happened to Japan ? Korea, Phlipines  or China before WW2 ? Were you aware that Teddy R had promised Japan Korea if they kept the Russians out of China ? Then Teddy R turned his back on them . Japan delivered to a point but was not supported . Instead the US tried to place scantions on Japan. WW2 had started and Japan new it needed raw materials and moved to block The US from taking control of them. You must also look at history , the US had been moving westward taking land and killing off those that were considered useless to the cause. Asia was the next and possiblely the last area of the world to be conqured . What Teddy R did is part of the reason for the Phlipine , WW2 , Korea and Viet Nam wars.
My neighbor buying houses around me isn't even close to what happened in Asia between the 1880's and WW2 . Maybe if you had said he came over and slaughtered part of my family and sent the others to kill off other neighbors you would have come closer in your comparing the two. 

[hunt-m-up]

Any way you want to paint it, Japan started the war with us with an offensive strike at Pearl Harbor. We dropped 2 bombs as an act of war. No apologies here.

[Dixie Dude]

Japan bought scrap metal from us before they invaded China.  After that Roosevelt cut off raw material trade with Japan.  Japan needed steel and raw materials.  The Phillipeans were right in their path to SE Asia.  Japan wanted Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) which belonged to France, the East Indes (Netherlands), Malaya, Singapoor, and Burma (Brittan), as well as China for raw materials, especially after Germany conquered the Netherlands and France.  China and the Phillipeans as well as Guam were right in the middle of their planned Empire. 
 
Japan took Korea and Taiwan in 1898 during the Spanish American war.  When Teddy Roosevelt was in office, they took the Kural islands from Russia.  They would have taken part of Siberia if we hadn't stopped them.  In WWI Japan declared war on Germany and took the German islands in the central Pacific.  They conquered Manchuria in 1932 without anyone saying anything.  Gave them a base to invade China. 

[SHOOTALL]

yep they were doing their part .

[us920669]

Their big mistake was becoming a Hitler good-bud.  That man really did threaten our way of life.  Tough times demand tough men.  I wonder if the men of today measure up.

[finisher]

The Zero book I read claimed that pilots hated the 20 m/m cannon, as it compromised the Zero's handling characteristics, its greatest strength.  I think it was just too much gun for that frame.  I always liked the P 40, rugged, fast and well-armed.  I guess I just figured that an in-line, water cooled airplane was automatically a clunker.

The P-40 was not near as bad as it's been made out to be, in post-war lit. It certainly was a maneuverable a/c - at medium/low speeds, it could turn inside Mustang (or P-47) with no problem. It could do a split S in much less space than a P-38, and at over 275mph could out-turn, out-dive, out-roll and out-zoom climb the Zero... you just had to stick to its strong points, and never, never, NEVER get into a low-speed swirling dogfight with a Zero, or it was Sayanora!

I think the Zero was a beautiful aircraft, a brilliant design for what they had to work with in terms of a low-powered engine. I took these photos at Chino a year ago - it's the only Zero still flying with the orig Japanese Sakae engine. After restoring the the late 70s, it toured Japan.


Click photos for high-res versions

***************
Hey YT, I've heard from a couple different places (nothing solid though) that the Zero's air frame design was actually borrowed from a design that Howard Hughes tried to sell to the military in the 30s. Do you know anything about this?


I'm inclined to agree with you on the P40 aircraft (that was Curtis, correct or was that the Spitfire). I see the P40 in the same respect as the F4 Phantom during Viet Nam. Big and heavy (can take a beating, carry more outboard tanks and ordnance meaning longer range capability)), fast and powerful (retained climbing speed and stood up structurally to heavy dives).


These were like the muscle cars of fighter aircraft.

[finisher]

To say that the attack on PH was un provoked is somewhat misleading. When you consider what Teddy R promised Japan then turned his back on them ( though congress did not even know about it ) might be considered provoking. I would suggest those intrested in more than the few days before the attack look back farther in time and see how Asia was being bid for by western powers in an effort to gain control of parts of Asian markets ansd raw materials.

***********
Very brave of you to tread into those waters with this crowd. People tend to be very short sighted in respect to history. Detail (especially those that don't justify our own ideologies) seem to fade out of memory beyond thirty years.


This is certainly a subject that is worth shedding a little light upon (maybe on another thread). What YT said about some of the names you may be called is probably true, but not of myself at least.

[yellowtail3]

Hey YT, I've heard from a couple different places (nothing solid though) that the Zero's air frame design was actually borrowed from a design that Howard Hughes tried to sell to the military in the 30s. Do you know anything about this?

Hughes made the claim at one time, but he was full of it. Jiro Hirokoshi refuted that. Look at a pic of the H-1 and the Zero sometime.
No magic in the Zero... just design choices. One could say that the Japanese learned a series of wrong lessons in China, and some found their way into the Zero. The only way Hirokoshi could meet the very stringent IJN specs for the Zero, with the engine avail, was to make it very light, very clean, low wing-loading. Fairly junior IJN pilots had inordinate input into the Imperial Navy's requirements, and they all liked a dogfighter - who doesn't? - though the age of tight turning was about over... they just didn't know it.

I'm inclined to agree with you on the P40 aircraft (that was Curtis, correct or was that the Spitfire). I see the P40 in the same respect as the F4 Phantom during Viet Nam. Big and heavy (can take a beating, carry more outboard tanks and ordnance meaning longer range capability)), fast and powerful (retained climbing speed and stood up structurally to heavy dives).

Most US WW2 fighters were that way. P-47, P-38, F6F, F4U - all were heavier than foreign competitors, with lots of horsepower. I think the P-47 exemplified US design philosophy, as much as the Zero did Japanese design philosophy.

[SHOOTALL]

To say that the attack on PH was un provoked is somewhat misleading.

quite true, but saying so might get you called a librul, or a comm'ninist, or even a Muslim....

I doubt that . I am American and back my country 100% . I support our Consitution and Bill of rights along with all laws that are legal. I have no problem with doing what ever is nessary to protect America and Americans and our intrest. I also like to see the reason for why things happen. No doubt we bring on attacks . We make the mistake that given the opertunity all people of the world would want to be like us when they do not. When you consider the goals of leaders from the forest of Germany  to England to America to Asia a path of conqure by whites who belived it was their right to rule the world it is not hard to understand our goals and goals of others do not always mesh well.
Only when all Americans look at the reason for these attacks on us and  understand will we begin to really be a super power as we should. Since I have been alive I have seen Americans led into war / police action and conflict around the world . Often the reason given to motivate us to fighting was a bald face lie only to be exposed and chip away at our integrity taking with it support for or govt. and often out troops ( something that should never happen ). Only by exposing the past can we learn to see the truth in the future. If we must go to war pray it is for a just cause . If it is a just cause pray we will win it in a short a time as possible with as few American deaths or injurys as possible and that we leave our attacker in a position where they will not be able to mount another attack for generations if ever .
So to say PH was un provoked is not true . To say what provoked PH was not a justifyed reaction for what had happened before PH would be a true statement and one I believe most Americans could support and justify our entering WW2 because of. A war BTW that was supported to the end .
 I guess if that is a liberal in someones mind they need to rethink their definition  , I know I'm no liberal - hey I would have read the Obama HCA before voting on it  . 

[BBF]

Their big mistake was becoming a Hitler good-bud.  That man really did threaten our way of life.

 Good Grief,  Did he have Carriers, landing craft and four engine long rage bombers all ready to invade the USA???