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A.J. Blocker Wrote:
If Lemnitzer had closer ties to the CIA then first thought we have another Joannides type situation because in 1975 then president Gerald Ford selected Lemnitzer to take part in a special panel to look into the CIA's possible activites on US soil.
AJ.
7/20/1961 At a National Security Council Meeting, the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Gen. Lemnitzer and CIA director Allen Dulles present a plan for a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union "in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions." President Kennedy walks out of the meeting, saying to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, "And we call ourselves the human race." (Brothers, Talbot)
Remember that Operation Northwoods came out of Lemnitzer's Pentagon, but the proposed plans also involved the CIA.
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I Know Jim Fetzer is persona non grata at the moment, but at one time he was a leader in the pursuit of truth:
ON THE ORIGINS OF THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK
James H. Fetzer
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[TD] [Editor's Note: Perhaps without appreciating the importance of his discoveries for understanding the origins of the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy, James Bamford's BODY OF SECRETS (2001) reveals the preoccupation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, especially its chairman, Lyman Lemnitzer, with invading Cuba and removing Castro, an approach to which President Kennedy proved an obstacle.] [/TD]
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[TD] James Bamford's BODY OF SECRETS (2001) appears to clarify and illuminate the origins of the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Take a good look at pages 78 (bottom) to 91 (top), which discusses President Eisenhower's preoccupation with Cuba and his suggestion that, if no actual pretext for an attack were available, then a pretext (a phony event) might be created that could be used to justify an invasion of the island. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Lyman Lemnitzer, took this message to heart and became obsessed with the Communist threat and the destruction of Castro. Everyone who cares about our country needs to understand this development. It looks like a large piece of a very complex puzzle.
A report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to the President warned of the major problem with right-wing extremism running through the military. "Among the key targets of the extremists, the committee said, was the Kennedy administration's domestic social program, which many ultraconservatives accused of being communistic. The 'thesis of the nature of the Communist threat', the report warned, 'often is developed by equating social legislation with socialism, and the latter with Communism . . .
" . . . much of the administration's domestic legislative program, including continuation of the graduated income tax, expansion of social security (particularly medical care under social security), Federal aid to education, etc., under this philosophy would be characterized as steps toward Communism'. Thus, 'This view of the Communist menace renders foreign aid, cultural exchanges, disarmament negotiations, and other international programs as extremely wasteful if not actually subversive'."
He and Air Force General Edward Lansdale viewed Operation Mongoose, set up to take out Castro, as "a golden opportunity" for the military to show that it could succeed where the CIA (at the Bay of Pigs) had failed. Lemnitzer "was raging at the new and youthful Kennedy White House. He felt out of place and out of time in a culture that seemed suddenly to have turned its back on military traditions. Almost immediately he became, in the clinical sense, paranoid; he began secretly expressing his worries to other senior officers . . . "Lemnitzer had no respect for the civilians he reported to. He believed they interfered with the proper role of the military. The 'civilian' hierarchy was crippled not only by inexperience', he would later say, 'but also by arrogance arisnig from failure to recognize its own limitations. . . . The problem was simply that the civilians would not accept military judgments.'
In Lemnitzer's views, the country would be far better off if the generals would take over. "For those military officers who were sitting on the fence, the Kennedy administration's botched Pay of Pigs invasion was the last straw. "The Bay of Pigs fiasco broke the dike', said one report at the time. 'President Kennedy was pilloried by the superpatriots as a "no win" chief. . . . The Far Right became a fount of proposals born of frustration and put forward in the name of anti-Communism. . . . Active duty commandesr played host to anti-Communist seminars on their bases and attended or addressed Right-wing meetings elsewhere. "Although no one in Congress coud have known it at the time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge."
Eisenhower's suggestion of creating "a pretext for invading Cuba--a bombing, an attack, an act of sabatoge--carried out secretly against the United States BY the United States . . . to justify the launching of a war", was a dangerous suggestion from a desperate president, who wanted to retire from office with a flourish. "Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost on General Lemnitzer. But he and his colleagues were frustrated by Kennedy's failure to authorize their plan and angry that Castro had not provided an excuse to invade. "The final straw may have come during a White House meeting on February 26, 1962.
Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to simply drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn. "As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly 'go soft' on Castro, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade Cuba quickly slipping away. The attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead and Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to launch any attacks against Americans or their property.
Lemnitzer and the other Chiefs knew there was only one option left that would insure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion into hating Cuba so much that they would not only go along, but would insist that he and his generals launch their war against Cuba. . . . They prepare a plan, called OPERATION NORTHWOODS, which "called for a war in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths--all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer-financed homes and limousines.
One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On February 20, 1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. "But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, 'the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic]'. This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, 'by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of Cubans'. Thus, as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext to launch a war. . . . "
Among the actions recommended was 'a series of well coordinated incidents to take place in and around' the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing 'friendly' Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them 'start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the based. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, [and] mortars fired at the base with damage to installations. "The suggested operations became progressively more outrageous. Another called for an action similiar to the infamous incident in February 1898 when an explosion aboard the battleship MAINE in Havana harbor killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American War with Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one million men volunteered for duty.
Lemnitzer and his generals came up with a similar plan. 'We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba', they proposed; 'casuality lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.' "There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: 'We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Maimi area, in other Florida cities, and even in Washington', they wrote. 'The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. . . . We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated) . . . We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Bombings were proposed, false arrests, highjackings. . . .
"Among the most elaborate schemes was to 'create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamacia, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan to cross Cuba. The passengers would be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.
Lemnitzer and his covert action officer, Brigadier General Wiliam H. Craig, reviewed their final plans for OPERATION NORTHWOODS, which would have placed the responsibility for both over and covert operations in the hands of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before heading for a "special meeting" in Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's office. 'An hour later he met with Kennedy's military representative, General Maxwell Taylor. What happened during those meetings is unknown. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was virtually no possibity that the U.S. would ever use over miliary force in Cuba.
"Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted, virtually to the point of demanding that they be given authority to invade and take over Cuba. . . . Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of communism in general and Castro in particular and Castro in particular. . . . What Lemnitzer was sugesting was not freeing the Cuban people but imprisoning them in a U.S. military-controlled police state. 'Forces would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba', he wrote, 'Continued police action would be required'. . . . "By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his military chief and was rejecting nearly every proposal the general sent to him. The rejections became so routine, said one of Lemnitzer's former staff officers, that the staffer told the general that the situation was putting the military in an 'embarrassing rut'. . . .
Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as JCS chairman and was transferred to Europe as chief of NATO. Years later President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a darling of the Repubican right, to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. . . . "Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs kept planning 'pretext' operations at least into 1963. Among their proposals was a plan to deliberately create a war between Cuba and any of a number of its Latin American neighbors. This would give the United States military an excuse to come in on the side of Cuba's adversary and get rid of Castro. . . . Among the nations they suggested that the United States secretly attack were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both were members of the British Commonwealth. . . .
"Lemnitzer was a dangerous--perhaps even unbalanced--right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades."
Now, given this background, it is not a stretch to imagine that the Chiefs came to the conclusion that the only obstacle between them and a Cuban invasion was their Commander in Chief himself. The President's enormous popularity meant, in their minds, that his assassination by a pro-Cuban, communist sympathizer would not only remove a weak and spineless leader from the nation's stage but almost certainly lead the country to rise up and demand retaliation by a full-fleged invasion of Cuba that would--finally and permanently--rid the world of Castro and demonstrate the importance of the military power exercised by the Chiefs. This plan was far more elegant than blowing up a plane-full of college students, because the only casualities would be a pinko-wimp president and a suitably designated patsy, a small price to pay for strengthening freedom and democracy.
In 1968, during his testimony under oath before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert McNamara vigorously denied that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution had been predicated upon a phony attack upon a U.S. warship with these words:
"I must address the suggestion that, in some way, the Government of the United States induced the incident on August 4 with the intent of providing an excuse to take the retaliatory action which we in fact took. . . .
"I find it inconceivable that anyone even remotely familiar with our society and system of Government could suspect the existence of a conspiracy which would have included almost, if not all, the entire chain of miliary command in the Pacific, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense and his chief assistants, the Secretary of State, and the President of the United States."
"Inconceivable", indeed! As if McNamara had never heard of OPERATION NORTHWOODS!
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© 2002 James Bamford / James H. Fetzer
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wikipedia bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lansdale[URL="http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/vietnam-f1001a-interview-with-edward-geary-lansdale-1979-part-1-of-5"]
http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/vietna...art-1-of-5[/URL]
Please pay particular attention to how he describes Ngo Dinh Diem about half way thru part one.
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A.J. Blocker Wrote:Thanks, Magda!
That was the info i was after...now lets see if i can find anything new to add to it since it surfaced some 10 to 15 years ago.
I'm also convinced i remember seeing a letter stating that Admiral Burkley said to a friend that Lemay was at Bethesda the night of the autopsy...I really wish the Admirals daughter would allow his lawyer to release the statement or info package he was entrusted with.
Thanks again,
AJ.
FYI: I contacted Burkley's lawyer's firm last year and they replied that All of Illig's papers were destroyed over 20 years ago. So, nothing there.
Unbelievable really.
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Frankie Vegas Wrote:A.J. Blocker Wrote:Thanks, Magda!
That was the info i was after...now lets see if i can find anything new to add to it since it surfaced some 10 to 15 years ago.
I'm also convinced i remember seeing a letter stating that Admiral Burkley said to a friend that Lemay was at Bethesda the night of the autopsy...I really wish the Admirals daughter would allow his lawyer to release the statement or info package he was entrusted with.
Thanks again,
AJ.
FYI: I contacted Burkley's lawyer's firm last year and they replied that All of Illig's papers were destroyed over 20 years ago. So, nothing there.
Unbelievable really.
I should add here as well that George Burkley's daughter who was the executor of his estate, Nancy Denlea has passed on as well. I'm not sure who the executor would be now.
I will also clarify my last post by saying that William F. Illig was Burkley's lawyer and the one who contacted the HCSA on Burkley's behalf to let them know that Burkley had evidence that suggested there had to be more than Lee Oswald shooting that day.
Burkley was a man who held a lot of answers to many questions we have, and the destruction of Illig's papers (and by default, Burkley's) was a massive loss to our community.
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It is unbelievable isn't it. You'd think they would have donated the papers to a university or the Naval College or JFK library or National Archives. Any thing but not burn them.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Magda Hassan Wrote:It is unbelievable isn't it. You'd think they would have donated the papers to a university or the Naval College or JFK library or National Archives. Any thing but not burn them.
There was a reason, IMHO, to not donate them to any archive!...and a very sinister reason....much in line with the burning of the first 'draft' of the autopsy report!
Several persons have said or hinted that LeMay [or someone of his stature] was present at the autopsy and directing to do and not do this and that. The autopsy was the SECOND MOST controlled event of the JFK murder/USA coup d'etat, only second to the turkey shoot from four to six sniper positions, in Dallas.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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From: http://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/6483.html
II. General LeMay's aide, a Colonel Dorman, urgently attempted to contact General LeMay by radio shortly before his inbound plane from Canada landed. This conversation is recorded on "side 2," the 66.3 MB MP3 recording, between times 11:05 and 12:04. Why have I declared this to be of such interest? Why is it more than just a passing, random, historical curiosity? Because: (1) General LeMay, returning from Canada to the United States following learning about the assassination, [B]disobeyed the orders of the Secretary of the Air Force (his nominal superior), Mr. Eugene Zuckert, and instead of landing at Andrews AFB as he was directed, landed at Washington D.C.'s National Airport adjacent to downtown Washington, D.C., instead; and (2) because Paul K. O'Connor, a Navy corpsman who assisted the Navy pathologists with the autopsy on JFK, stated many times before his death that General LeMay attended the autopsy of President Kennedy on 11/22/63. I documented the great antipathy that LeMay (Air Force Chief of Staff) and President Kennedy had for each other---as well as LeMay's disobedience toward the Air Force Secretary the day of the assassination---in volume 2 of Inside the ARRB, on pages 481-488. The real question here is, "Why did the editor of the LBJ Library version of the Air Force One tapes decide to remove this conversation from that version of the recordings?" Perhaps the whole subject of General LeMay, particularly whether or not he was present at JFK's autopsy, was "radioactive" when the tapes were edited in the 1960s. General LeMay did not retire from the U.S. Air Force until 1965; presumably he was still Air Force Chief of Staff when the edited and condensed tapes were assembled, and perhaps he had personally ordered the removal of that conversation from the record. Alternatively, someone else may not have wanted LeMay's name even remotely associated with the events surrounding the autopsy, especially if he had been present at JFK's post-mortem examination. More than one third of the air time on the Air Force One tapes is devoted to the autopsy arrangements, and "someone" may have been quite uncomfortable about the urgently expressed desire of LeMay's aide to contact him early that evening. LeMay landed at National Airport 52 minutes prior to the "on the blocks" time for Air Force One, and 83 minutes prior to the arrival of JFK's body at Bethesda (at 6:35 PM). He had plenty of time to be driven to Andrews if he had wanted to be there; and he certainly had plenty of time to drive from National Airport (or the nearby Pentagon) to Bethesda Naval Hospital, prior to the body's arrival.[/B]
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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For a mere $3,000 US you can have your own wall-size framed photo of our beloved Dr. Strangelove http://www.ebay.com/itm/GENERAL-CURTIS-L...258471a410
HI THIS IS A PICTURE OF GENERAL CURTIS LEMAY Curtis Emerson LeMay (November 15, 1906 October 1, 1990) was a general in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968.
He is credited with designing and implementing an effective, but also controversial, systematic strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific theater of World War II. During the war, he was known for planning and executing a massive bombing campaign against cities in Japan and a crippling minelaying campaign of Japan's internal waterways. After the war, he headed the Berlin airlift, then reorganized the Strategic Air Command (SAC) into an effective instrument of nuclear war.
When the U.S. entered World War II in December 1941, LeMay was a major in the United States Army Air Forces (he had been a 1st lieutenant as recently as 1940), and the commander of a newly created B-17 Flying Fortress unit, the 305th Bomb Group. He took this unit to England in October 1942 as part of the Eighth Air Force, and led it in combat until May 1943, notably helping to develop the combat box formation.[SUP] [6][/SUP][SUP] [7][/SUP] In September 1943 he became the first commander of the newly-formed 3d Air Division. He personally led several dangerous missions, including the Regensburg section of the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission of August 17, 1943. In that mission he led 146 B-17s to Regensburg, Germany, beyond the range of escorting fighters, and, after bombing, continued on to bases in North Africa, losing 24 bombers in the process.[SUP] [6][/SUP][SUP] [7][/SUP] The heavy losses in veteran crews on this and subsequent deep penetration missions in the autumn of 1943 led the Eighth Air Force to limit missions to targets within escort range. Finally, with the deployment in the European theater of the North American P-51 Mustang in January 1944, the Eighth Air Force gained an escort fighter with range to match the bombers.[SUP][ citation needed][/SUP]
Robert McNamara described LeMay's character, in a discussion of a report into high abort rates in bomber missions during World War II:
One of the commanders was Curtis LeMayColonel in command of a B-24 [ sic] group. He was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war. But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal. He got the report. He issued an order. He said, 'I will be in the lead plane on every mission. Any plane that takes off will go over the target, or the crew will be court-martialed.' The abort rate dropped overnight. Now that's the kind of commander he was.[SUP] [8][/SUP]
In August 1944, LeMay transferred to the China-Burma-India theater and directed first the XX Bomber Command in China and then the XXI Bomber Command in the Pacific. LeMay was later placed in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands.[SUP] [6][/SUP][SUP] [7][/SUP]
LeMay soon concluded that the techniques and tactics developed for use in Europe against the Luftwaffe were unsuitable against Japan. His Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers flying from China were dropping their bombs near their targets only 5% of the time. Operational losses of aircraft and crews were unacceptably high owing to Japanese daylight air defenses and continuing mechanical problems with the B-29. In January 1945, LeMay was transferred from China to relieve Brig. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell as commander of the XXI Bomber Command in the Marianas.[SUP] [6][/SUP][SUP] [7][/SUP]
He became convinced that high-altitude precision bombing would be ineffective, given the usually cloudy weather over Japan. Furthermore, bombs dropped from the B-29s at high altitude (20,000+ feet) were often blown off of their trajectories by a consistently powerful jet stream over the Japanese home islands, which dramatically reduced the effectiveness of the high-altitude raids. Because Japanese air defenses made daytime bombing below jet stream-affected altitudes too perilous, LeMay finally switched to low-altitude nighttime incendiary attacks on Japanese targets, a tactic senior commanders had been advocating for some time.[SUP] [6][/SUP][SUP] [7][/SUP] Japanese cities were largely constructed of combustible materials such as wood and paper. Precision high-altitude daylight bombing was ordered to proceed only when weather permitted or when specific critical targets were not vulnerable to area bombing. General LeMay was informed by a senior staff member, Colonel William P. Fisher, that bomber pilots were turning back from these low altitude bombing runs due to heavy anti-aircraft fire from Japanese defense forces. Fisher suggested to Lemay that crews who achieved successful strike rates should be rewarded by being released from their deployment. LeMay implemented this unorthodox plan and the strike rate went up to eighty percent.[SUP] [9][/SUP]
LeMay commanded subsequent B-29 Superfortress combat operations against Japan, including massive incendiary attacks on 67 Japanese cities. This included the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of March 910, 1945, the most destructive bombing raid of the war.[SUP] [10][/SUP] For this first attack, LeMay ordered the defensive guns removed from 325 B-29s, loaded each plane with Model E-46 incendiary clusters, magnesium bombs, white phosphorus bombs, and napalm, and ordered the bombers to fly in streams at 5,000 to 9,000 feet over Tokyo.[SUP] [6][/SUP][SUP] [7][/SUP]
The first pathfinder airplanes arrived over Tokyo just after midnight on March 10. Following British bombing practice, they marked the target area with a flaming "X." In a three-hour period, the main bombing force dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs, killing 100,000 civilians, destroying 250,000 buildings, and incinerating 16 square miles (41 km[SUP]2[/SUP]) of the city. Aircrews at the tail end of the bomber stream reported that the stench of burned human flesh permeated the aircraft over the target.[SUP] [11][/SUP]
A "LeMay Bombing Leaflet" from the war, which warned Japanese civilians that "Unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America's humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives."
The New York Times reported at the time, "Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the B-29s of the entire Marianas area, declared that if the war is shortened by a single day, the attack will have served its purpose."[SUP] [6][/SUP][SUP] [7][/SUP] Precise figures are not available, but the firebombing campaign against Japan, directed by LeMay between March 1945 and the Japanese surrender in August 1945, may have killed more than 500,000 Japanese civilians and left five million homeless.[SUP] [12][/SUP] Official estimates from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey put the figures at 220,000 people killed.[SUP] [10][/SUP] Some 40% of the built-up areas of 66 cities were destroyed, including much of Japan's war industry.[SUP] [10][/SUP]
The remaining Allied prisoners of war in Japan who had survived imprisonment to that time were frequently subjected to additional reprisals and torture after an air raid.[SUP][ citation needed][/SUP] The massive bombing also hit a number of prisons and directly killed a number of Allied war prisoners. LeMay was quite aware of the Japanese opinion of him: he once remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes, especially in view of Japanese executions of uniformed American flight crews during the 1942 Doolittle raid. He argued that it was his duty to carry out the attacks in order to end the war as quickly as possible, sparing further loss of life.
Presidents Roosevelt and Truman justified these tactics by referring to an estimate of one million Allied casualties if Japan had to be invaded. Japan had intentionally decentralized 90 percent of its war-related production into small subcontractor workshops in civilian districts, making remaining Japanese war industry largely immune to conventional precision bombing with high explosives.[SUP] [13][/SUP]
As the firebombing campaign took effect, Japanese war planners were forced to expend significant resources to relocate vital war industries to remote caves and mountain bunkers, reducing production of war material. As a Lieutenant Colonel who served under LeMay, Robert McNamara was in charge of evaluating the effectiveness of American bombing missions. Later McNamara, as Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, would often clash with LeMay.
LeMay also oversaw Operation Starvation, an aerial mining operation against Japanese waterways and ports that disrupted Japanese shipping and food distribution. Although his superiors were unsupportive of this naval objective, LeMay gave it a high priority by assigning the entire 313th Bombardment Wing (four groups, about 160 airplanes) to the task. Aerial mining supplemented a tight Allied submarine blockade of the home islands, drastically reducing Japan's ability to supply its overseas forces to the point that postwar analysis concluded that it could have defeated Japan on its own had it begun earlier.
THIS PICTURE OF GENERAL CURTIS LEMAY HAS BEEN IN THIS FRAME FOR A LONG TIME TAKING THE PICTURE OUT OF THE FRAM WILL RUNE THE PICTURE UNLESS YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THAT.IF IT IS TAKEN OUT OF FRAME WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PICTURE.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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