by Mark Richards

Created on: February 25, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

9/11 and Pearl Harbor, there definitely are parallels here, to begin with both were surprise attacks against American targets.

Pearl Harbor was a territory of the United States and our Pacific Fleet was stationed there, the World Trade Center complex in New York City was a major hub of trade.

Aircraft were used in both attacks, on December 7th 1941 the Japanese Imperial Navy used three types of aircraft to attack the fleet at Pearl Harbor, a dive bomber, a torpedo plane, and a fighter aircraft. The attack took place on a Sunday morning at dawn.

The attack on the World Trade Center, and Pentagon used civilian aircraft whose pilots were held as hostages along with the passengers.

The attacks succeeded because intelligence services in both cases were not up to par in breaking codes, or analyzing the data in a prompt and timely manner.

The attack on December 7th took place with the President (Roosevelt) not knowing for certain that Hawaii would be attacked. Military advisor's to Roosevelt briefed him stating that the Japanese would more likely attack Wake Island or the Phillippines, which they were right.

All US Carriers were out to sea delivering fighter squadrons to Wake Island and the Phillippines at the time the attack took place.

Husband E Kimmell commanding Admiral at Pearl Harbor conducted usual procedures that morning having the Destroyed USS Ward make a routine anti submarine patrol near the entry to the harbor.

The Ward fired on a Japanese midget Sub and due to failure to pass the word on to Kimmell the Japanese were able to successfully attack Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941

9/11 01 Various branches of US intelligence had been making reports to their commanders for months leading up to the attack, again the reports were ignored by senior intelligence officials, and no warning went forth.

Secondly even if there had been knowledge of the attack, besides shooting down civilian airliners very little else could have been done. The people in the airliners would have died anyway.

Unlike Pearl Harbor, had President Bush been aware of the Attack on 9/11 his ability to respond was limited. He could have put an air cap in the area, however this did not mean that there could not have been alternate targets.

Also how would he have known that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would be targets? If intelligence knew, as I said with the exception of putting fighters in the area there was nothing else that could have been done.

Had intelligence known who the terrorists were they could have been stopped, again do we know there weren't other agents in place to take over if this group failed?

There were to have been at least two more attacks on that day.

It is easy to blame someone else for a decision, but without solid evidence you have only speculation and needless conspiricy theories.

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