This is What War Planning and Victory Looked Like

The nobility of another time where the United States had a strategy and led.

World War II ended 70 years ago — here’s the planned US invasion of Japan that never happened

Business Insider: On August 14, 1945, US President Harry Truman announced the unconditional surrender of Japanese Emperor Hirohito, thereby ending World War II.

vj day kiss

The surrender came after months of bombing raids across the Japanese countryside, two atomic bombs, and the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on the island nation.

The iron resolve of the Japanese was a major factor the US anticipated while planning the invasion of mainland Japan. The culture known for literally putting death before dishonor with practices such as hara-kiri would not, by any stretch of the imagination, go softly into surrender.

By the time the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 500,000 Japanese had already died during bombing raids, not just in Tokyo, but in smaller towns too.

This badly hurt Japanese morale as Yutaka Akabane, a senior-level civil servant, observed: “It was the raids on the medium and smaller cities which had the worst effect and really brought home to the people the experience of bombing and a demoralization of faith in the outcome of the war.”

But despite several bombing raids a week in the beginning of 1945, and the resulting displacement of 5 million people, the Japanese remained resolute.

And as US forces prepared a ground invasion, they were acutely aware of the challenges they faced against an iron-willed Japanese population.

tokyo bombing ww2 wwii world war 2 japan

The planning committee for the US invasion expected that “operations in this area will be opposed not only by the available organized military forces of the Empire, but also by a fanatically hostile population.”

Nevertheless, the Allied forces prepared to send 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and 400 destroyer ships and escorts to Japan’s coast. The Allies expected 456,000 deaths in the invasion of Japan’s military stronghold at the island of Kyushu alone.

In preparation for what everyone expected to be a bloody, prolonged clash, the US government manufactured 500,000 Purple Hearts to be awarded to troops wounded in the invasion.

At the same time, 32 million Japanese braced for war. That figure includes all men ages 15 to 60, and all women ages 17 to 45. The US anticipated them to bear whatever weapons they could muster, from bamboo spears, to antique cannons, to machine guns.

Children had even been trained to act as suicide bombers, strapping explosives to themselves and rolling under Allied tank treads.

But on July 16, 1945, the US secretly and successfully carried out the world’s first atomic-bomb detonation, giving the US another option in the war against Japan.

atomic bomb

After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, where 140,000 lost their lives, on August 8, the USSR then declared war on Japan as well, and on the next day they attacked Japanese-occupied Manchuria, China. On that same day, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 40,000 instantly.

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Japanese Emperor Hirohito.

Japan had previously been presented the Potsdam Declaration, or terms for an unconditional surrender, but the country had refused it.

Even after the two atomic bombs, Japan would not surrender for fear of how Emperor Hirohito would be treated after the war.

Emperor Hirohito was not merely a constitutional monarch, but a living god in the eyes of the Japanese. They would not see him treated as a war criminal by Allied forces — and after Pearl Harbor and 20 million or so Asian lives lost to Japanese imperialism, the Allies would accept nothing less than an unconditional surrender.

Japan and the Allies spent mid-August arguing over the exact language of the surrender, but on August 15, Emperor Hirohito addressed his nation via radio for the first time ever to announce the country’s surrender. Because of a difference in time zones, this anniversary is remembered on August 14 in the US.

Just last month, Japan officially released the master audio recording of Hirohito’s surrender. A version of this recording can be heard below:

 

 

al Qaeda and Taliban New Allegiance in Afghanistan

The Taliban has raised their flag after they take control of the Helmand district in Afghanistan. Afghan soldiers bailed out and the Taliban has seized military gear supplied to the Afghanistan forces after killing 40 Afghan soldiers and police.

Sharia will be imposed and wield deeper power in the region.

After the official declaration of the deal of Mullah Omar was announced, the Taliban leadership was fractured due to a sense of betrayal. During many tribal meetings, it was soon announced that Mullah Akhtar Mansour would be the new leader.

 Omar

 Mansour

Ayman al Zawahiri, who took control of al Qaeda after the death of Usama bin Ladin made a declaration of pledge and cooperation with Akhtar Mansour where new threats against America have been officially broadcasted.


al Zawahiri has been thought to be hiding in the Pakistan border region and recently produced an audio raising news fears in the region. Additionally, while there have been several attempts at peace talks with the Afghanistan government, the Taliban is now formally opposed.

In part from Reuters: The swift announcement that Mansour, Omar’s longtime deputy, would be the new leader has riled many senior Taliban figures, and Omar’s family said this month that it did not endorse the move.

Mansour’s position could be shored up by the vote of confidence by al Qaeda, the global militant group that has maintained ties with the Taliban for almost two decades since the tenure of its founder and late leader Osama bin Laden.

“As leader of the al Qaeda organization for jihad, I offer our pledge of allegiance, renewing the path of Sheikh Osama and the devoted martyrs in their pledge to the commander of the faithful, the holy warrior Mullah Omar,” Zawahiri added.

Reiterating support for the Taliban is also a tacit rejection of Islamic State, the new ultra-radical Sunni Muslim movement that is ensconced in Iraq and Syria and has gained the support of a few Afghan insurgent commanders.

Al Qaeda is being challenged by Islamic State for leadership of the global jihadist movement, as determined backers of IS have cropped up in Libya and Yemen this year.

Al Qaeda was set up by Arab guerrillas who flocked to Afghanistan to fight Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s. It thrived under the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule in Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion that followed Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington drove both groups underground.

ISIS Uses Chemical Weapons in Iraq

EDGARTOWN, Massachusetts (AP) — The United States is investigating whether the Islamic State used chemical weapons, the White House said Thursday, following allegations that IS militants deployed chemical weapons against Kurdish forces in northern Iraq.

 

Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said the U.S. is taking the allegations “very seriously” and seeking more information about what happened. He noted that IS had been accused of using such weapons before.

“We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further stress that any use of chemicals or biological material as a weapon is completely inconsistent with international standards and norms regarding such capabilities,” Baskey said in a statement.

Earlier Thursday, Kurdish officials said their forces, known as peshmerga, were attacked the day before near the town of Makhmour, not far from Irbil. Germany’s military has been training the Kurds in the area, and the German Defense Ministry said some 60 Kurdish fighters had suffered breathing difficulties from the attack — a telltale sign of chemical weapons use. But neither Germany nor the Kurds specified which type of chemical weapons may have been used.

Confirmation of chemical weapons use by IS would mark a dramatic turn in the U.S.-led effort to rout the extremist group from the roughly one-third of Iraq and Syria that it controls.

Although the U.S. and its coalition partners are mounting airstrikes against the Islamic State, they are relying on local forces like the Kurds, the Iraqi military and others to do the fighting on the ground. Already, those forces have struggled to match the might of the well-funded and heavily armed extremist group.

At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the U.S. was speaking with the Kurds who had made the allegations to gather more information. She said that if reports of chemical weapons are true, they would further prove that what IS calls warfare is really “just systematic attacks on civilians who don’t accord to their particularly perverse world view.”

“I think we will have to again move forward on these allegations, get whatever evidence we can,” Power said.

She added that as a result of earlier chemical weapons use by the Syrian government, the U.S. and its partners now have advanced forensic systems to analyze chemical weapons attacks. She said anyone responsible should be held accountable.

Similar reports of chemical weapons use by IS had surfaced in July. But it’s unclear exactly where the extremist group may have obtained any chemical weapons.

Following a chemical weapon attack on a suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus in 2014 that killed hundreds of civilians, the U.S. and Russia mounted a diplomatic effort that resulted in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government agreeing to the destruction or removal of its chemical weapons stockpiles. But there have been numerous reports of chemical weapons use in Syria since then — especially chlorine-filled barrel bombs. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the global chemical weapons watchdog, has been investigating possible undeclared chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria.

Word of the White House’s probe into possible chemical weapons use by IS came as President Barack Obama was vacationing with his family in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Also on Thursday, IS militants claimed responsibility for a truck bombing at a Baghdad market that killed 67 people in one of the deadliest single attacks there since the Iraq War.

Further details can be found here.

U.S. Flag Raised in Cuba Today by John Kerry and Envoy

The weekend before Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Cuba with an envoy to raise the U.S. flag at the re-opening of the embassy in Havana, 60 Cubans were arrested in what is more repression. Arrested were Cuban Ladies in White and yet Barack Obama on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard had nothing to say and John Kerry was mute of the matter himself.

John Kerry leads delegation to Cuba for flag raising at U.S. Embassy

WaPo: The United States plans to raise the Stars and Stripes at its embassy in Havana Friday morning, kicking off a day of symbolism and carefully balanced outreach to both Cuba’s communist government and its restive population.

Two U.S. government aircraft are scheduled to depart Washington at dawn to carry Secretary of State John F. Kerry and dozens of others on the 2   1/2 hour flight to the island. In addition to a 20-person official delegation of officials and members of Congress, selected Cuban-Americans, entrepreneurs and a large media contingent will be aboard, along with the three retired Marines who last lowered the flag when relations were severed more than 54 years ago.

Speeches are to follow the raising of the banner outside the seven-story embassy building, built in the early 1950s on the Malecón, Havana’s sweeping waterfront boulevard. The U.S. Army’s Brass Quintet will play both country’s anthems.

President Obama’s inaugural poet, Richard Blanco, whose family left Cuba shortly before he was born in 1968, will read “Matters of the Sea,” a poem he has written for the occasion.

The embassy has been open for nearly a month, following the official July 20 re-establishment of U.S.-Cuba relations. But the flag has been kept under wraps for the arrival of Kerry, the highest U.S. government official to set foot in Cuba since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president .

After the ceremony, Kerry will meet privately with Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Havana. Ortega was instrumental, along with Pope Francis, in the success of nearly two years of secret bilateral negotiations that led to this day. Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced plans to restore relations last December.

In a carbon copy of last month’s official opening of the Cuban Embassy here, Kerry will meet with Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez at his ministry, and the two will then hold a joint news conference.

Later in the afternoon, a separate U.S. flag will be raised at the oppulent estate in western Havana that is the once and future residence of the U.S. ambassador, currently occupied by Charge d’Affairs Jeffrey DeLaurentis. Members of Cuban civil society — including political dissidents — ave been invited to that ceremony and to a reception with Kerry will host.

In an interview Wednesday with CNN Espanol, Kerry rejected criticism Cuban government opponents were not asked to attend the morning events at the embassy.

“We just disagree with that. We’re going to meet,” he said. The embassy ceremony, “is a government-to-government moment. We’re opening an embassy. It’s not open to everybody in the country. And later we’ll have an opportunity where there is a broader perspective to be able to meet with … a broad cross-section of Cuban civil society, including dissidents,” he said.

While many dissidents support the U.S-Cuba opening, many also oppose it, charging that the administration is helping the Castro government stay in power while getting little in return. Since the restoration of relations was announced, the number of opposition demonstrations has sharply increased, along with government detention of dissidents.

“The truth is that this will not be the complete and total change everybody wants overnight. It’s going to take a little bit of time,” Kerry told CNN. “But I am convinced … President Obama is convinced, that by being there, we will be able to do more to help the Cuban people,” he said. “Their concerns, their issues, their hopes, their dreams will be better represented more directly to our government with accountability in that process.”

Human rights, Kerry said, is “at the top of our agenda in terms of the first things that we will be focused on in our direct engagement with the Cuban government,” including his Friday talks with Rodriguez.

In a Thursday letter to Kerry, the organization Reporters Without Borders USA noted that Cuba ranks 169 of 180 countries on its press freedom index. “Cuba’s information monopoly and censorship practices do not apply only to local media,” it said, “foreign journalists are also subject to restrictions, receiving accreditation only selectively” and “deported” when they displease “the current regime.”

Despite the restoration of relations, the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba remains in place. Obama has called for Congress to lift it, along with remaining restrictions on U.S. travel to the island, but lawmakers have resisted.

The eight members of Congress in Kerry’s official delegation include Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); and Democratic Reps. Karen Bass (Calif.), Steve Cohen (Tenn.), Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Jim McGovern (Mass.).

The embargo continues to be a rallying point for the Cuban government. In an article published in Granma, the official Cuban Communist party paper, on the occasion of his 89th birthday Thursday, revolutionary leader and former president Fidel Castro criticized the United States for everything from dropping an atomic bomb on Japan near the end of World War II, to setting the stage for global economic crisis by amassing most of the world’s gold supply.

That crisis, Castro said, had battered Cuba’s economy, even as it is “owed compensation equivalent to damages, which have reached many millions of dollars” as a result of the U.S. sanctions.

 

Smoke Coming From the Hillary Server Fire is Worse

Strip the security clearance from this woman. There are many calling for this exact action and the State Department will not comment if she in fact still has it. At least during this investigation, her clearance should be suspended.

Posted on this site was a timeline and factual information when it comes to the Hillary Servergate affair. A few hours have passed and there of course is more to report.

More factual intrigue is listed below and it is not in any real date order given what and how information is being obtained. This comes as the FBI begins the data and material investigations.

1. Barack Obama drafted and signed a lengthy Executive Order #13526 spelling out the comprehensive conditions of all classified and top secret information. The Democrats and those supporting the Hillary camp in Severgate can NO longer claim restrictive laws are passed AFTER her term as Secretary of State. Further and quite important, Hillary was ONE of 20 who were designate with authority to apply classified codes to documents making it all the more curious on how she can claim ignorance in top secret or restricted documents.

2, It is now confirmed, the second server in question which held the material involved in Servergate, located in New Jersey and seized by the FBI was stripped of data. The FBI does in fact have the skills to rebuild and retrace all administrative actions in the server.

3, Now another at the core of this investigation is Huma Abedin who was and is Hillary’s personal confidant and aide de camp. To date, she has not signed nor turned over as order by Judge Sullivan the certification under penalty of perjury or the email materials which hovers in the range of 7000 communication transmissions.

4. As discussed before, not only was there 3 thumb drives of the Hillary email transaction surrendered to the FBI and 3 servers, but the FBI will likely need to obtain or gain a search warrant for 3 additional communication devices held by Hillary, those being her Blackberry, her iPhone and her iPad.

5. When it comes to the SIGINT or geo-spatial top secret email in question, it appears it was relating to a drone image of terror groups in Pakistan. This speaks to sources and methods such that the top secret designations would have originated with the original transmission of the critic (critical communications).

6. Platte River was NOT an approved facility to house or support classified material. Outside vendors are to be approved in the case of top secret material that have hardened rooms preventing espionage or eavesdropping.

7. There will be more Hillary personnel caught up in the investigation snare and those likely will include Mike Morrell, Deputy Director of the CIA; Phillippe Reines, Hillary’s gatekeeper; Jeremy Bash, former Chief of Staff for Leon Panetta; Andrew Shapiro, Hillary’s Policy Advisor; and several others now at Beacon Global Strategies, Hillary’s personnel policy think tank.

8. The contracted server company, Platte River is now raising deeper questions due in part to a lawsuit and investigation from November 2014. The lawsuit document is found here. They stole phone numbers and metadata from White House military advisors.

The Internet company used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her private server was sued for stealing dozens of phone lines including some which were used by the White House.

Platte River Networks is said to have illegally accessed the master database for all US phone numbers.

It also seized 390 lines in a move that created chaos across the US government.

Among the phone numbers which the company took – which all suddenly stopped working – were lines for White House military support desks, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, a lawsuit claims.

Others were the main numbers for major financial institutions, hospitals and the help desk number for T2 Communications, the telecom firm which owned them.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of T2 claims that the mess took 11 days to fix and demands that Platte River pay up $360,000 in compensation.

More to come for sure…..stay tuned.