The U.S, shot down Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's plane

[Hardrada]

in the Pacfic since they found out he was on board. He planned Pearl Harbor and the US wanted to take him out and did. Now I am mentioning this WWII event just for the sake of argument but is this in any way comparable to the mission against OBL? What do you think?

[Vincardog]

1. WWII was a real declared war. OBL was a CIA operative

[DJ13]

2. +1

[sharp_stick]

3. Correction

a dead CIA operative, a scumbag and a mass murderer. Fuck him, I'm glad he's dead and I'm glad we did it.

[Hardrada]

4. I know it may be hard to compare. Neither man lived to reveal

anything and as I said in another thread this is bothersome to historians. Yamamoto had actually been in the US. Had OBL visited here also? I knew Y was not an agent of any kind obviously but one wonders how our culture had affected these men.

[hifiguy]

22. Yamamoto knew the US quite well.

IIRC he studied and worked here for a couple of years and learned much about this country. He warned his superiors that attacking the US directly "would be to awaken a sleeping tiger." How right he was, as to WW2.

[Recursion]

35. He was a Hahvahd man

And met FDR there in 1919. Odd bit of historical trivia.

[Ikonoklast]

39. And an honorable foe.

Yamamoto was not a fanatic, he was a professional military man.

Opposed invading China.

Opposed attacking the United States.

Did what a good flag officer does, kept his mouth shut and did his duty to the best of his ability.

His death was an enormous blow both in the loss of a brilliant tactician, and in morale.



But he was engaged in warfare against this country, and deserved his fate, just like the recently unlamented deceased.

[hifiguy]

49. Indeed

Yamamoto was a far more true embodiment of the code of bushido than the fanatics who dreamed that they were the reincarnations of Tokugawa.

[Renew Deal]

6. Are you saying that 9/11 happened on orders from the CIA?

Please expose yourself for the lunatic you pretend to be.

[Vincardog]

8. Are you saying that OBL was NOT given MILLIONS of USA $$$ and arms?

[Renew Deal]

10. I asked you a simple question.

[Vincardog]

11. I have no evidence of who exactly ordered 9/11. Do you?

[Renew Deal]

12. That's reasonable

Better than I expected.

[Vincardog]

13. I asked you a simple question

[Renew Deal]

14. He was

When Reagan thought he would be helpful. But there is 0% chance that Bin Laden was ordered to do 9/11 by the CIA.

[Electric Monk]

16. Ok, so where's *YOUR* proof, re: 0% chance? That's just opinion.

(before this subthread gets deleted)

[Renew Deal]

18. Believing that the US government was in on 9/11 is not reasonable and not believable.

It is the theory of nut cases who should be institutionalized.

[Electric Monk]

20. Appeal to consequences of a belief, appeal to authority, and insults.

That's all you posted to back up your position.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-consequences.html
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html

[Renew Deal]

23. I know.

I don't hold high regard for MIHOP crowd. That's why you won't see me in the 9/11 forum. ;)

[coalition_unwilling]

54. Have you read 'The New Pearl Harbor' by Loyala Marymount

Theology Professor Emeritus David Ray Griffin? If not, I think you might want to hold back a little on the 'nutcases' slur. As Griffin and others have noted, there are varying levels of possible (please do note that both I and Griffin say 'possible') U.S. government involvement.

Just one example to give you a taste:

CIA briefer flies to Crawford on August 6, 2001 to deliver daily brief to Bush warning that bin Laden is planning a major attack on U.S. soil. Bush says, "OK, you've covered your ass." A strange, a really strange, statement for the POTUS to make, Bush's notorious incompetence and disengagement notwithstanding. I am highly skeptical of most conspiracy theories but, try as I might, this comment of Bush's rings false in my ears and mind, almost like he's doing a 'nod, nod, wink, wink' dance with the briefer but the fix is already in.

Griffin does not say that the U.S. government was 'in on 9/11'. He merely asks for an independent investigation.

[Recursion]

28. Yes, I am

The CIA never had contact with OBL during the Russo-Afghani war. Not out of kindness but out of the fact that he was just a glorified travel agent for bored Yemeni and Saudi kids. Even Zawahiri has said as much.

[hack89]

44. Actually, he wasn't

The resistance in Afghanistan had three main (and equal) sources of funding:

1. The USA - funneled through the ISI.

2. Arab governments - especially the Saudis.

3. Islamic "charities" - there are a lot of rich, fundamentalist Muslims.

Contrary to popular belief, the CIA did not have a big footprint in Afghanistan - the ISI was very protective of their turf and insisted that their men act as go betweens. Most of that US money was spent without direct oversight of the CIA. And the ISI had their own agenda - for example a lot of that money was actually spent training Kashmiri terrorists. From the ISI perspective, India was always the real danger.

Ben Laden was primarily funded by the Islamic charities - a charismatic, pious holy warrior was irresistible to rich, fundamentalist Saudis. There is absolutely no evidence that he ever worked for the CIA.

I recommend the book Ghost Wars by Steve Coll for all the details.

[The Straight Story]

19. So if the govt helps me out (welfare/etc) and then I kill people, I can blame the govt? (nt)

[cherokeeprogressive]

27. It would seem that's the way this argument points.

CIA operative... so many here parrot that and I bet they don't even know what it means, if it's true, or what it would have entailed if it IS true.

[Vincardog]

33. Do they provide Stinger missiles for welfare now? STRAW MAN

[cali]

25. the evidence that he was a CIA agent, is dubious to say the least

prison planet and other crap web sites make the claim but that's about it.

[Vincardog]

30. During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the m

During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We take a look at America’s role in Afghanistan that led to the rise of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda with Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.

dubious to say the least?
Were you eve alive in the 1980's?

[Recursion]

31. Ah, the urban myth continues

The Arabs and Yemenis who came to Afghanistan

A) did not receive American support
B) did not receive Pakistani support until the very end
C) participated in almost no operations against the Soviets
D) were derided on all sides as "jihad tourists"

[Vincardog]

32. When you show me your Pulitzer prize I will respect you opinion more than the one I listed

[hack89]

45. You need to read that book more carefully

he explicitly says that bin Ladin was extremely anti-American and got his funding from wealthy Saudis.

[lilyin]

5. Well, bin Laden

was considered a "combatant" and the rules of engagement would allow what was done with Pakistan's permission to be there.

[JohnnyLib2]

7. It's the only precedent I can find of a presidential 'kill order' made public.

On another thread, Truman's authorization of the atom bomb was mentioned, but the direct, personal target makes this different.

I do see the comparison with the Yamamoto matter, particularly in terms of what is found acceptable to the majority.

[Poll_Blind]

9. I cannot believe you brought that up- I was just trying to track who that was..

...from memory (yesterday) but for some reason I thought it was Tojo. I was going to make the comparison that OBL was much closer to someone like Yamamoto, at this point in time (10 years later) anyway. Only being able to go and read more and refresh my memory (after you came up with the right name) did I realize how apropos it was.

:thumbsup:

PB

[hifiguy]

24. The Imperial Council

of which Tojo was then a part, made the decision to attack the US directly. I believe Tojo became PM slightly later in the war. Yamamoto was given the order to plan an attack, and it turned out to be at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto also feared the consequences of a full American entry into the Pacific war but carried out his orders.

[AsahinaKimi]

15. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

This was a painting of him. I was curious to see what he looked like.

[Vehl]

17. Yamamoto was only following orders

In fact he went on record as one who opposed the pearl harbor attack. He rightly said that any war against America could not be won.(he studied in America and was a lifelong subscriber to the national geographic magazine). However he was a soldier and was ordered to plan the attack.Which he then went ahead and planned meticulously as the military mastermind he was.

To compare him to Osama is doing a great dis-service to Gen Yamamoto

[xchrom]

21. In both cases trials would still be the best choice. Nt

[Recursion]

34. You'd try an admiral? How about a captain? A commander?

A lieutenant? An ensign? A bosun's mate?

At some point we're left with the fact that the purpose of a military is to kill people in enemy militaries.

[xchrom]

37. Who did did we try at Nuremberg?

If you are going continuously proclaim law & international law as your basic under-pinning then there's not a lot of wiggle room.
Now ghengis khan is your standard - it's different story.

But decide which it is.

[Recursion]

41. Government officials (nt)

[hack89]

46. That was after the war

are you saying you can't target and kill enemy commanders during the war?

[LanternWaste]

42. If they surrender.

If they surrender. Nazi's did, hence trials.

[bpj62]

26. Pearl harbor

Technically Pearl Harbor was an act of terrorism by a nation state. Japan's declaration of war was not not delivered until after the attack had begun. However Yamamoto was a soldier and was thus a legitimate target. The only similarity between the two is that both men were brought down by superb intelligence work. OBL declared war on the United States back in 1988.

[Hardrada]

36. Yes, we had cracked their code via Magic.

[Recursion]

47. It's interesting to compare the Japanese and German codes

The Japanese used a point to point system, and the Germans an end to end system. In an end to end system, every ship and radio station has to have the full encipher/decipher routine available, so if you capture one (like, say, a U-boat) that didn't have a chance to destroy it, you can eventually break the code.

The Japanese point to point system is in some ways safer: if you capture a ship intact you could still only decipher messages for that ship. But, because of that, routing instructions for the messages had to be sent in plaintext, and that fact allowed known-plaintext attacks against the whole system.

[Hardrada]

52. Thanks for clarifying that. I knew they seemed to be different

in some way. I don't think the Japanese code required a Bletchley computer!

[Recursion]

53. Exactly; the Japanese code was cracked with classical cryptanalysis

Because the routing info was sent in plaintext the cryptanalysts could figure out a lot -- but, there was never a "breakthrough" moment like with the Enigma machine; they just gradually could read more and more of the Japanese signals.

[Hardrada]

56. When I read the Morrison History of the US Navy in WWII

I have to take into account he is not mentioning Magic. I have to read all that back into the older US war histories. Otherwise some events seem fairly mysterious.

[kristopher]

29. IY was a state actor; OBL was an individual attempting to act as a state.

There are different rules governing state to state relations than govern how states relate to individuals.

OBL adopted the role of a state with his declared and implemented War on the US. 911 isn't just a point that has provoked the desire for revenge, it was an event with legal and ethical significance. It is a new and somewhat murky area, but when you restrict the view to just this case and leave out the slippery slope arguments, it is very easy to justify a wanted-dead-or-alive approach to apprehension.

[Spider Jerusalem]

38. Bad comparison.

It wasn't as if he planned the attack on Pearl Harbor and then retired. It wasn't an act of revenge. He was a leading strategist of the Japanese war against the United States at the time of his death; in comparison bin Laden appears to have been in hiding and isolated retirement, no longer relevant to the operations of Al Qaeda (which in any case was never and is not a monolithic organisation with a single "leader").

[SoCalDem]

48. "...appears to have been in hiding and isolated retirement, no longer relevant..."

and how do we know that? Why did he still have couriers? to bring him Danish & USA Today?

[taterguy]

40. I think good citizens check for duplicates . . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1017288&mesg_id=1017288

[Hardrada]

43. Missed that. Anyway my thread generated more discussion

although rather heated discussion! Basta!

[hulka38]

50. I would be happy if this administration admitted the truth

which is they ordered the SEAL team to execute OBL. They did not want him alive, in detention and certainly not on trial.

[Hardrada]

51. And won't tell us the reasons why.

[coalition_unwilling]

55. They cannot admit the truth now. It's too late for the truth now. That

train left the station when Obama left the podium on Sunday night.

However, the TRUTH always prevails! ALWAYS!

N.B. Extra-judicial assassinations are so 16th Century.

[Hardrada]

57. Well, there was The Night of Long Knives in 1934

which decapitated the Sturm Abteilung for good.

[coalition_unwilling]

58. A wickedly sly observation. I had forgotten the Night of Long Knives, but

I'm sure its proponents used some of the same language as is being used here by proponents of this "kill" mission.

"Removing a terrorist" is one phrase I saw here that sounds as though it might have come straight from 1934.

Thanks for pointing it out