[fighterpilot]

Do you have a cite for the suppression of US intelligence prior to the attack? The mainstream history sources I've read have suggested no such thing and led me to believe the US really was caught with their pants down. The Japanese sent an envoy to alert the US after the attack started, but while trying to maintain plausible deniability that they tried to make contact beforehand.

Also why would you pin the fundamental blame on FDR cutting off the oil? Japan was running a pretty brutal occupation of China at the time. Continuing to supply oil would be supporting that occupation. It's true though that part of Japan's motive for the attack was that oil was running out.

[magicsmoke]

FDR didn't cut off Japan's oil because of their occupation of China. During Japan's occupation starting 1937 American companies were making plenty of war profits supplying oil and metal to Japan's military, with the US government only sending strongly worded letters.

Japan's oil was cut off in 1941 because they started seizing Southeast Asian colonies of European powers that had been occupied by Germany in 1940, and these colonies were significant suppliers of oil and rubber for the conflict in Europe. If Japan had limited its activities to China the US might have continued its war profiteering indefinitely.

[cpleppert]

>>Also why would you pin the fundamental blame on FDR cutting off the oil? Japan was running a pretty brutal occupation of China at the time.

See chapter 8 of The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars. War between Japan and the United States was a certainty to FDR's advisors if an oil embargo was imposed.