Clips from the Fog of War

[GoldeneyePwner]

As evidence provided on this discussion board, Mr. McNamara is right about one thing. Rationality will not save us.

[GratefulVince]

Phillip Glass's best score!

[Hperman09]

Had we not firebombed Japan, the Japanese government and it's people would have not surrender, Allied troops would have been killed ever more by their war-machine. War is necessary evil but not fighting it is more evil than sitting back and watch the enemy attacks us. WW2 is unlike other wars after it, a lot of people support the government war-machine and badly they were targeted.

It sucks but those Axis powers(Germany, Japan, and Italy) should not start a war in the 1st place.

[invisiblebears]

@amfmful

Hail Satan, hail the Dark Lord.

[100cjkennedy]

Best doc ever.

[martinienvenenado]

i love The Fog of War

[DaPerceive9]

Whoever thinks the US shouldn't have bombed Japan are idiots. We would have killed EVEN MORE people if we didn't bomb them. It was the ethical choice. It's pathetic that the Japanese are still playing victim even though they tortured/raped/killed and were the complete definition of inhumane to every Asian country..

[pherman1215]

@DaPerceive9 This documentary was produced by Americans. The Japanese are not claiming to be "innocent victims". Even if they were, a distinction should be made between Japanese military targets and fire bombing 100,000 civilians.

[Roneified]

To those that think McNamara is chiefly responsible for Vietnam, read up on Capt. Herrick during the gulf of tonkin and what he reported to McNamara.To say that McNamara worked for the elite and didn't give a hoot for the lower class americans, read up on the World Bank organization, which he headed after his pentagon tenure.THIS man unlike some that we know today, is willing to admit his faults and his mistakes in his handling of the war. Have we done that with Iraq? or is it still right?

[seovideo24]

Its an amazing movie - of which i seem to have watched the first /2 of the movie mainly

Terrific insights - whether its because he was bright a good communicator , or he had insight or because he felt guilt and it was towards the end of his life i don't know

Still there is "I accept responsibility" and yet with the fire bombing "Well in a sense i was part of a mechanism"

sort of sounds like not accepting responsibility

and dilution of thus

[MiXueLe]

@seovideo24 Yes, but when he slips that way the documentary highlights the inconsistency. I believe that's why, as he says 'I don't want to accept full responsibility', the film keeps showing his signature on all those war documents.

[Londonhibs88]

@MiXueLe with all respect he is human and as such he's always going to be likely to stray from a fixed position on such complex issues. For what it's worth I think his willingness to face up to the decisions he HAD to make (as opposed to pontificate over like armchair observers on here) demonstrate a real sense of character and self engagement that many of us simply wouldn't be capable of.

[MiXueLe]

@Londonhibs88 Oh, absolutely. That's what I mean, really. The documentary is the safeguard, even if he waffles a bit at times. I have a great respect for McNamara, particularly as he is trying to teach us lessons he feels are essential to humanity.

[michigan007]

The savagery the Japanese shown during the war, towards both civilians and POWs, are exponentially worse than any the US has ever been guilty of. The Japanese (even civilians) are "part of a mechanism that recommended" rape, torture, and murder. Such evil must to be burned and nuked. These people deserve no sympathy. The Japanese ignored the rules of humanity, therefore they've forfeited what they have denied to their victims. The firebombing and the subsequent nuking was the correct decision.

[derdriui]

@michigan007 You realize that there is a difference between soldiers and people?

Would you say to the Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis who have had their villages bombed, their people caged and tortured and their children killed by American soldiers that it's okay to firebomb America? After all, invading Vietnam and dropping napalm on its people, as well as agent orange and agent blue that still kill people, that's EXACTLY what "ignoring the rules of humanity" mean.

[derdriui]

'And when you die, all anyone will say is, "Better that he had never lived at all."'

[Drawnsbyme]

I just saw this on tv. I am 17 years old and I was so touched. still I sit here in my chair open-mouthed, just thinking: wow.

[LandingCraft1969]

Considering all facts LeMay was a Mad man! Yet, whom shall we choose to decide such matters?!

[thufir420]

@LandingCraft1969 He was one of those guys who you put in a glass case with a sign that says "break in case of war."

[LandingCraft1969]

Considering all facts LeMay was a Mad man!

[legolas199]

incredibly and brutally honest. RIP Robert McNamara.

[derdriui]

@legolas199 ... RIP victims of Robert McNamara.

[legolas199]

@derdriui haha listen hippy, it was a WORLD war, he was acting in the best interest of his country at the time and the interests of saving as many lives as possible during the course of the war.

[saxondog2001]

Thank you for this clip. Yes, it's easy to be critical in retrospect. People who knew McNamara said he was so brainy he was scary.

[kuinosenmonkey]

THE FAKE OF NANKING - 1

watch?v=4LbVeadjSbo

Talk between Jin Matsubara and Shoichi Watanabe(1-2)

watch?v=3orlrcenBSw

Every photo of NANKING MASSACRE seems to be fake.

watch?v=aefFXZhOWBQ

watch?v=1vQ9W9Mg0as

Fabricated Japanese history in WW2 by Japan's Asahi Shimbun

watch?v=76eghqbFa0I

[kuinosenmonkey]

EX-CHINESE OFFICERS AMONG U.S. REFUGEES ; Colonel and His Aides Admit Blaming the Japanese for Crimes in Nanking

Wireless to The New York Times. SHANGHAI, Jan. 3. American professors remaining at Ginling College in Nanking as foreign members of the Refugee Welfare Committee were seriously embarrassed to discover that they had been harboring a deserted Chinese Army colonel and six of his subordinate officers.

[kuinosenmonkey]

The professors had, in fact, made the colonel second in authority at the refugee camp. The officers, who had doffed their uniforms during the Chinese retreat from Nanking, were discovered living in one of the college buildings: They confessed their identity after Japanese Army searchers found they had hidden six rifles, five revolvers, a dismounted machine gun and ammunition in the building.

[kuinosenmonkey]

The ex-Chinese officers in the presence of Americans and other foreigners confessed looting in Nanking and also that one night they dragged girls into the darkness and the next day blamed Japanese soldiers for the attacks. The ex-officers were arrested and will be punished under martial law and probably executed.

(January 4, 1938 New York Times)

Existence of this article can be checked at the site of NYTimes.

[wolfwarmonger]

look up the raping of nanking. History is simply an echo that keeps on repeating itself.

[croissantanyone]

a few hundred thousand civillians, who were engaged in the industry of War and embeded their war industry in "civillian" areas, is a good price to pay to end a culture that murdered 40 million Chinese a few years earlier.

[kuinosenmonkey]

@croissantanyone

There is no fact that Japan implemented such a policy.

There is no fact that Japan murdered 40 million Chinese civilians.

The capital of Manchuria

watch?v=7LAAM2JSnr4

watch?v=tir3-u3OL8Y

Precious film of soon after the Fall of Nanking(5-6)sub

watch?v=mLME_hW0CCg#t=8m20s

[yousef6d]

his voice sounds like george bush

[croissantanyone]

@yousef6d It must be his fault.

[fleury150]

Here is what i dont get. If lemay wanted to blanket a city with fire bombs, why did he need to have the bombers @ 5,000 instead of 22,000. i undertand that the bombs were more accurate, but i dont understand y the accuracy was needed in a blanket fire bombing of a city.

[sunragnarok]

what US did to Japan just has no name, probably is one of the worst war crimes in the modern history, you all people should see this documentary, and after that, watch the movie: Grave of the Fireflies

[itschillasfukdude]

@sunragnarok They engaged us in a real war and they wanted it. Well they got it enough said.

[Blueshirts07]

@sunragnarok and what the Japanese did to the Chinese, Phillipinos, Koreans, and allied POWs was far worse and they killed millions more people than the US did.

[blitzk]

@Blueshirts07

oh, so that makes it ok then.

[71soulfly]

War is about attrition, how many enemy can you kill and how quickly, war is unlikely to ever end simply bc we're human and intelligent enough to kill very well. imagine a world where countries had no boundaries like it used to have when ppl werent here, animals went where they liked and no-one/animal felt aggrieved by it, how come we havent adopted that world without boundaries, it would be a nicer world without territory lines.

[fleury150]

i watched this whole movie once and i was wondering did he not talk about the liberty or did i miss it?

[nancybl]

This is the clip! Watch his mouth right at the start. He doesn't say 100,000. He says 80,000. I MUST know the story behind this dub. I think it is hands-down one of the most powerful moments in this film. Morris could have covered that slip with an image but he didn't. Did he have McNamara say 100,000 over and over until it fit? I find it to be significant that McN. just slipped and forgot 20,000. Imagine a such a slip. Oops, 80,000, 100,000, no matter. Yes, 20,000 people matter.

[thewritingwriterof89]

@nancybl HE DOES!!! wtf is that...

[nancybl]

@thewritingwriterof89 Exactly!

[Olafandlafandlaf]

@nancybl Can you verify if the dub or edit is true?

[nancybl]

@Olafandlafandlaf Thanks for responding! I can't confirm anything. Believe me, I have written to Morris so many times via his website and I've heard nothing. I also haven't seen anything in the published criticism about the film. Help?

[kristianpagh]

What a cold-hearted motherfucker!

[PersianPaladin]

There is no innocent party here. The attacks on civilians were evil regardless of who did it.

[28steve13]

this man was a war criminal and should be known as one

[fleury150]

@28steve13 watch the movie both lemay and mcnamara agree w/ u..

[superheronumber1]

This documentary gives such a telling insight into such an interesting topic. The real beauty of it is in it's observational method; it doesn't judge or favor any point of view; McNamara is what he is, yet when you ask the right people the right questions it's like a waterfall of knowledge, wisdom and information, that's what makes this documentary so exceptional. It speaks for itself, ultimately the viewer has to decide the moral conclusions.

[92af]

Robert McNamara was a brilliant man except for what he did during the vietnam war

[p2breaker]

The Japanese forced us into world war. The japanese forced millions to fight in horror and hundreds of thousands of American boys to be mutilated on foriegn beaches and jungles. They had to pay for that. Their wreckless hate and insane vision of Asian domination forced us to be cruel and unforgiving. The Japanese said they would fight till every last man woman and child was dead. We just took them up on their offer.

[erikinhawaii]

@p2breaker WRONG ! Your Government forced us into WW2 with Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt needed a pretext for invasion to bring America into a war- disregarding radar signals of the Imperial Navy planes entering airspace over the north west side of Oahu the higher command allowed them access .

[WhyMustYouFail]

Learn from the mistakes of the past. It's funny how people always use this quote, yet very few actually learn from the mistakes of the past. Very few will actually admit they made mistakes for that matter. What we can learn from the film is that people lack understanding for each other. Everyone is too caught up with their needs to see the perspective of others. When everyone can finally do that, then people can finally end war and begin to create a society of peace.

[warcraftfan911]

a fav movie of mine. interesting person tells allot about how violencecan get out of hand.

[ruzz3ii]

...and World War 2 was " a good war."

[proadmin1]

@robertmark34 I think the problem is that while the Japanese may be unable to come to terms with their responsibilities during the war, that is not a failure we suffer from - and I think we are better for that capacity. Because we ASK questions regarding the good AND the bad decisions. That does not make us weaker - in fact it makes us stronger because we are able to avoid mistakes - it's called failure analysis and it's a critical skill as opposed to pussyfooting around our f*ckups.

[kuinosenmonkey]

Zeitgeist Movie : 2007 : 11/14 : War Games

watch?v=dBVaGJZzgWk

FDR plans sneak attack before Pearl Harbor

watch?v=C1cX_Fr3qyQ

watch?v=2Uf_3E4pn3U

America's Plan to Bomb Japan before Pearl Harbor

watch?v=_wNA--Pw9Y8

The cause of the cancer of the worker. It is caused by a pure hydrogen bomb!.

watch?v=6HENbLXwA6o

[mercury11043]

an absolutely brilliant movie about a complex subject. no judgements here and that is to morris' and ultimately mcnamara's credit.

[manusmleon]

Eichmann anyone?

Part of "a system"

[kuinosenmonkey]

Tokyo,Empire of Japan 1938

watch?v=3A0eovdUI14

[Raford146]

So that gave us a right to kill innocent civilians?

[renecborbon]

We Navy Seabees still sing, "I promise to remember the 7th of December." We certainly have not forgotten September 11.

[newlife1273]

I love this guy!!

[blite13]

Isn't this the asshole who helped kill Kennedy? Him and Dulles were some kind of pissed when Kennedy told them to fuck off. Anything this douche says = believe the opposite.

[tessler6868]

kennedy & macnamara at odds? reign in the anti-historical rants pls. i suggest you watch entire film, where kennedy & cuban missile crisis etc is discussed:

ht tp: // video. google. com/ video play? docid = -8653 7888 6446 2752 804#

[DS9kov]

he was right about bombing efficency

[proadmin1]

Not likely. The whole documentary is really quite thorough. It certainly is the case that McNamara in this movie and through much of his later life certainly sought to couch his personal legacy differently than might otherwise be the case, BUT the militarists (Rusk, McGeorge Bundy and Walter Rostow) who really deceived Mr. McNamara regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incidents & are synonymous to the Feith, Perle & Wolfowtiz of our day the difference is the later groups dubious loyalties to the US.

[Pdids01]

This is one of the most frightening and powerful scenes I've ever witnessed in any film - documentary or otherwise.

It's too bad it doesn't continue to where McNamara talks about the % of people killed and the dropping of the nuclear bombs being disproportionate (in the minds of some people) to the objectives we were trying to achieve.

[gard751]

People here very quick to vilify this man but remember he was there and you arm chair historians weren't . He did this film to serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of us. He admits his errors and his "lessons" are an attempt to educate us. You have to respect that.

[paddyleblanc]

I'll decide that which I choose to respect without your input.

[gard751]

Fine then. Don't be a douche about it.

[paddyleblanc]

Goodness! How delightfully witty of you.

[gard751]

I know. Thanks.

[paddyleblanc]

8-)

[newexperiment]

No he doesn't. Watch the end of the movie. The director/interviewer tries to get him to admit to some level of remorse/regret/shame and he denies any.

He says that he's damned if he does explain why and damned if he doesn't explain why and that he'd rather be damned if he doesn't.

The real mistake, is keeping secrets from the public which he keeps to the end of the film.

No respect, sorry.

[gard751]

Your working within the framework that he was responsible for the war, which he wasn't. He was making decisions which were dictated by the intel he was recieving, the advise of his staff and the cultural views of the time. In fact he was constantly at odds with LBJ over his strategies which is why he was let go in the first place.

Sorry folks, you'll have to look elsewhere to find the evil boogieman.

And the secrets he keeps are due to the fact that some are still classified to this day.

[newexperiment]

saying that they are classified is not a magic word that makes it okay that they are secrets.

But I had time to cool off, I give him respect for participating in the film.

[erikinhawaii]

@gard751 so does the same apply to say serial killers ? Should we let them off with a small fine and a podium to allow them to teach us the lessons we should know about killing in numbers? Robert McNamara is a war criminal who worked for the Military industrial Complex.

[gard751]

@erikinhawaii War criminal how? By serving in WW2 and waging war against Japan. A war that was forced onto the United States by the Japanese themselves? Was he a war criminal by being sucked into Vietnam and eventually sacked because he opposed the president.? Christ, he was the only one in the room who was lucid. He served his country the best way he could. Nothing more.

[erikinhawaii]

@gard751 over 100,000 innocent people killed on his bombing raids in Japan. True, this was normal procedure for those days. However lets skip up to 25 years and talk about Vietnam. He knew the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie. This was the pretext for war in Vietnam. Now I ask you this. Who should be help accountable for the killing of innocent Vietnamese ?

[kuinosenmonkey]

@erikinhawaii

No. These wholesale slaughters to innocent Japanese civilians were against the Hague conventions clearly. These attacks were completely illegal and abnormal.

[erikinhawaii]

@kuinosenmonkey - You are absolutely right. But the fact is, this was the bombing "methods" of WW2. I don't think in WW2 no country was actually adhering to any rules of warfare.(the US still doesn't to this day) Don't forget, the Japanese Imperial Army was responsible for more civilian war deaths than all fighting armies ... probably combined.

[kuinosenmonkey]

@erikinhawaii

Japan had not adopted such methods.

If you want to claim that what you said is true, you should enumerate the concrete names of the city where Japan bombed indiscriminately.

[erikinhawaii]

@kuinosenmonkey should I mention that the Japanese Imperial Army dropped chemical weapons on many Chinese cities, Nankin to name one of them. Japan was extremely brutal to civilians in China. Google UNIT 731 , you'll shit your pants when you see what the Japanese did to civilians.

[kuinosenmonkey]

@erikinhawaii

There is no fact that the Japanese army indiscriminately bombed to Nanking.

There is no fact that the Japanese army used the chemical weapon in Nanking

The proof about human body experiments of Unit 731 has nothing.

[erikinhawaii]

@kuinosenmonkey - You must be Japanese. Japanese history books notoriously omitted the real history and provocations of the Japanese Imperial Army. Korea and CHina both have protested against Japan's Ministry of Education concerning these text book errors. You need to learn a little more about WW2's Pacific Theater. Denying the fact of Unit 731 makes you just as bad as the perpetrators.

[kuinosenmonkey]

@erikinhawaii Do you claim that the education of China or Korea is more correct than the education of Japan? Anti-Japanese education of south Korean(English subtitle). watch?v=oDFtgcPFh9I Anti Japanese Education in China watch?v=4lil9EEIvZg Japanese History Textbook "The Truth?" (English Subtitle) watch?v=XvdCsMu2_eM The true history in Korea watch?v=94umHT7aBu4 The Japanese history textbook is biassed in the meaning contrary to your saying.

[erikinhawaii]

@kuinosenmonkey I will say no more than this, Google Unit 731 or youtube it for that matter. Aloha

[motemotemugi]

@erikinhawaii

After all, erikinhawaii escaped.

[erikinhawaii]

@motemotemugi I just don't like debating with ignorant people who do not understand their own history. The Japanese are very ignorant of their WW2 history. Sad but the truth. ( 3 year former resident of Tokyo)

[MultiUsername45]

@kuinosenmonkey You know my grandfather lived through the Japanese invasion of China maybe you should tell him there's no proof. Many of the Chinese do hate Japanese people that is true, but I don't because I do not hold grudges from history. Doing so I think would be ignorant. Maybe Japanese troops didn't use chemical weapons, but your denial as if the nothing happened offends me.

[kuinosenmonkey]

@MultiUsername45

I tell the same thing for anyone.

[MultiUsername45]

@kuinosenmonkey Then you are wrong.

[kuinosenmonkey]

@MultiUsername45

Then, I ask you. In which city did your father witness the indiscriminate bombing of the Japanese army concretely?

[MultiUsername45]

@kuinosenmonkey Grandfather... And he wasn't there for the bombing he was there for the occupations GuanZhou. I don't hate Japanese people, but I understand why the older generations of Chinese do now. Your ignorant denial about everything... I can only imagine if the Germans did the same thing.

[kuinosenmonkey]

@MultiUsername45

You must stop the suggestive impression operation. You should tell concretely what the Japanese armey did in Guangzhou. By the way, there is no fact that the Japanese army executed the indiscriminate bombing in Guangzhou.

[FalconKPD]

@gard751 Well put. Besides, high explosives were ineffective on the Japanese factories from those heights, so incendiaries were the only option, collateral damage was unavoidable.

[kuinosenmonkey]

@FalconKPD

Why did the United States repeat the combustion experiment of Japanese-styled houses in the desert in Utah? For what purpose did the United States plan the indiscriminate incendiarism using bats?

Air-raid on Tokyo part7

watch?v=DN8N-9IIlgE

Weird Weapons of WW2

watch?v=gcpdtcRLeVY

[FalconKPD]

@kuinosenmonkey They were so high up that high explosives would simply miss their targets. Incindieries were used because, although they may miss their targets, they would cause fires that would spread to military targets, unfortunately, this had very bad consequences, as many civilians were caught in the crossfire. War is hell, and if they had the chance, the Japanese would've done the same.

[QwidgyboMan]

@gard751

I respect it. Doesn't mean he wasn't a vulgar war criminal who should've been hanged for crimes that some Nazis (who were) would've blushed at.

[derdriui]

@gard751 Really? We should RESPECT him? A man who murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings? RESPECT him?

[runnerpucci]

@derdriui If your take home message about this documentary was that McNamara was satan than I think you subscribe to a view of history which will only serve to perpetuate more devilish acts. You have to understand the rationality at work with these decisions and understand that these decisions were made by rational people in rational ways. The point is that good, smart and capable people can do terrible things in a system which perpetuates terrible things.

[gard751]

@derdriui For fighting the Japanese? The Japanese who orchestrated the Bataan Death March? The Japanese who starved and executed thousands of Allied POWs? Those Japanese?

You're goddam right! I RESPECT the fuck out of him.

[derdriui]

@gard751 ... Really? THOSE are the Japanese who were sitting in their country? Not men, women and children, but a whole nation of soldiers?

You're such a willfully ignorant idiot.

[gard751]

@derdriui You misunderstand the issue. Though bombing civilians is wrong, nobody considers what the alternative would have been. Namely, the cost of allied lives had the war continued. The casualty estimates of a landing on the Japanese mainland were in the hundreds of thousands. But I suppose Japanese civilian lives are worth more than Allied soldiers lives. How does one force a belligerent into surrender when his code (Bushido) essentially forbids it?

[The90089]

@gard751 My dad would have agreed with you. He was asssigned to be one of the first to land if we did invade nad the H-Bomb not been dropped. He was also on mainland after the war and no one really understood state-side or maybe even world wide that Japan had been fire bombed even more so than what people were shocked with in Europe. People knew about Dresden. Not what went on in Japan.

No idea if he would have agreed with McNamara, but he would have supported the candor.

[Wadzymodo]

"If it be possible, so much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men."

~Romans, 12:18

[defstoner18]

Ugh. This man couldn't have died fast enough.

[mistersmith6000]

These comments, which I take at face value, are valuable and humble- even if they come from a man at the head of a machine that has left so many scars on the world. It shows there is no separating the black and white. I wonder what he would have thought about us trashing Iraq and setting off a wave of resentment that will haunt us. Great program

[proadmin1]

He actually was one of the first of the Viet Nam Pentagon group to speak out on the matter, it's extraordinarily unlikely that Mr.'s Rumsfeld or Perle seem so profoundly misanthropic that such a detailed and apparently genuine change of viewpoint, seems very unlikely.

[speardeep]

I concur. Mac was a great, great man. Flawed, to be sure, but nonetheless great. I spent a couple of decades hating him until I bothered to read everything about him. A great, conflicted, broken man who gave himself totally for the betterment of his country and the world. To his undying credit he ducked none of the responsibility for his mistakes, and the worst mistakes were not his alone.

[Creigs9]

Bob was a great man, and I'm glad he was on our side. RIP Bob.

[kalevraa]

i bet satan is doing some very serious bob ripping right now...

[hownos]

all is fair in love and war. the japs were tough

[kalevraa]

how, people often quote this saying, but the actually only mean it when they are the one doing it. if your lover cuts YOUR balls off, or if your enemy incinerates YOUR cities, suddenly you are the victim being treated unfairly. after all, pearl harbor was "a day that will live in infamy"; i don't think americans were saying "oh well, all is fair in love and war". were they?