A Parody

A little fun I had back in September 2004, making fun of the NY Times, and other lefties, who decried the reasons for going to war against Saddam. Wrote something about a post-WWII investigation in the same style.

I present a parody . . . just barely, that is.

Flash! NY Times Discovers Germans Did Not Attack Pearl Harbor 

New York Times headline September 4, 1946:

DECEMBER 7 COMMISSION FINDS NO HITLER INVOLVEMENT IN PEARL HARBOR ATTACK;

'NO COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIP FOUND';

MAJOR FDR/TRUMAN REASON FOR WAR WITH AXIS UNDERMINED

September 4, 1946, Washington, DC -- New York Times reporters got an exclusive look at the still-classified report of the Commission looking into the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, an attack President Truman and his late predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted was carried out by forces under the control of the Japanese Government. The attack was used to justify war not only against Japan but against Germany and Italy, as well. It also served as justification for the creation of secret military tribunals to try so-called German "spies and saboteurs" and to imprison large numbers of Asian-Americans.

According to the documents viewed by Times reporters and to aides close to the investigation, the Commission found no evidence of "any German or Italian involvement in the attack" and could not definitively conclude that the attack was, in fact, carried out with the full knowledge of Japan's civilian leader, Mr. Hirohito. "We have to withhold judgment," said one aide familiar with the Commission, "as to whether Mr. Hirohito ordered the attack or it was carried out by rogue elements perhaps within the Japanese Navy." The aide further noted, "We continue to be troubled by some indications that the White House knew of the impending attack, but, most troubling, we have seen absolutely no evidence that the democratically elected civilian leader of Germany at that time, Mr. Hitler, or the democratically elected leader of Italy, Mr. Mussolini, had any involvement or even foreknowledge of the attack. In addition, we also remain disturbed by the fact that US and British investigators have been unable to find any German weapons of mass destruction (WMD)." The argument that Germany was developing atomic weapons served as justification for the expensive Manhattan Project, which developed atomic weapons for the US. For as yet unexplained reasons the atomic bombs were not used against Caucasian Europeans but only against Asian Japanese.

According to observers, the twin failures to find German WMDs and evidence linking the Germans or the Italians to the Pearl Harbor attack "gravely undermine" FDR's stated reasons for going to war with the Axis Powers, particularly in the absence of League of Nations approval. Another aide noted, "It's hard to argue that Germany or Italy posed an imminent threat to the United States. I mean, none of us likes what some Germans allegedly did to some Jews, but that hardly justifies the unilateral actions of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Poland, South Africa, Netherlands, New Zealand, China, Russia, and some others. They should have at a minimum gone to the League and made their case there. And, of course, the line about spreading freedom is nonsense. We certainly saw no cheering in the streets of Berlin and Tokyo when our troops arrived and over a year after the war we still have troops in Japan, Italy, France, the UK, Korea, and Germany. In fact, the war could be seen as a distraction from the struggle for freedom and democracy. We, of course, have not dealt with Peron in Argentina or Franco in Spain. Those regimes continue to pose a threat to freedom, one which the Administration is not addressing because of the distraction created by waging war against Germany, Italy and Japan."

The Commission acknowledged the Administration's claim that Germany allegedly declared war on the United States but could find no "credible documentary evidence" that such a "declaration" was approved by Mr. Hitler, himself, or that he had consulted with Mr. Mussolini or Mr. Hirohito. According to a staff memorandum, "The State Department provided Commission members a diplomatic note allegedly from the German Embassy in Washington stating that Germany was declaring war on the United States. The Commission, however, was unable to verify the authenticity of the note, the chain of custody of this 'evidence,' or whether the democratically elected civilian leaders of Germany had authorized such a note."

The memorandum also noted that the Administration's failure to find Mr. Hitler and produce him for the Commission hampered efforts to authenticate the note. The staff memo went on to fault the US Administration for not checking more carefully on this issue, "before rushing into war with Germany." It also noted that Mr. Mussolini was denied a fair trial and that his civil and human rights might have been violated by being hanged and spat upon in public, "the US as the occupying power had the responsibility to protect Mr. Mussolini."

The Commission report would seem to support the prewar position of former Ambassador to Britain Mr. Joseph Kennedy who saw the war as "an unnecessary one, an elective one, and one carried out to favor powerful defense contractors and the Jewish lobby. The guy in the wheelchair lied!" Observers also have found very damning the Commission's conclusion that the German ideology of Aryan supremacy and the Japanese belief in the supremacy of the Asian race precluded any possibility that these two "fundamentally opposed ideologies" could have collaborated. Mr. Kennedy and other experts noted that to believe otherwise one also would have to accept that "Nazi Germans and Communist Soviets" could have reached an agreement. Expert observers have discounted rumors of a prewar Nazi-Soviet Pact as unfounded, and the product of "either faulty intelligence or the Jewish lobby."

Noted anti-war activist and feminist documentary-maker Leni Riefenstahl has announced that she and Mr. Kennedy will produce a film titled “Celsius 12-7: The Temperature of Lies” which will expose the falsehoods that led America into war with Germany.

This report, according to experts consulted by the Times, will cost Mr. Truman the 1948 election.