Reply #129: days before pearl Harbor, the country was 50/50 split on whether to enter the war.

[Old and In the Way]

It's unclear whether FDR "knew" that the Japanese would attack the naval base at Pearl Harbor; I doubt he'd have left the battleship group in mooring there had they had specific pre-attack warnings. On the other hand, I have no doubts that FDR was willing to take the 1st blow in order to build a consensus in this country to enter the war. Sadly, some seem to think the US was exactly the same country in 1940 that we are today. That was certainly not the case and, had we stayed out of WW2, it's pretty likely that there would have been a completely different history that none of us should want to contemplate.

To try to equivocate the attack at Pearl harbor with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is ridiculous. It distorts the reality of the Pearl Harbor event and elevates the lies of Bush Cheney to invade a country that had neither provoked nor had the capacity to threaten our country. A better analogy would have been to equate the 2003 attack on Iran to Germany's invasion of Poland that hinged on a Germany's fabricated casus belli at Gleiwitz.