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1) Remember Ben telling Locke about the "magic box," and then inexplicably producing Locke's con-man dad, Anthony Cooper ("the man from Tallahassee"), bound captive and awaiting execution? Cooper told Locke he was in a car accident in Florida, blacked out and woke up a prisoner on the Island, not knowing how he got there. He thought he might be dead and this was some peculiar form of hell, especially since he believed his estranged son had died already, in the crash of Oceanic 815.

2) Remember how in September 2004 Richard was in Florida, shooting the surveillance video of Juliet's sister and nephew, so Ben could prove to her that they were alive and well? That was at the time of the Oceanic 815 crash. Ben told Richard, on a live satellite hookup, to get back to the Island right away, because they had a problem to handle. Do we really think Richard spent precious days traveling back to assist with this emergency?

3) Earlier, upon her recruitment, Richard had told Juliet that the trip to the Island would be long and exhausting. They would give her a strong sedative so she could could sleep through the journey. She took the sedative willingly and winked right out. And then she awoke on the submarine, docked at the island's pier.

I believe that the submarine didn't bring Juliet to the Island at all. That sub was just a decoy to make her think that's how she arrived. She got to the Island the same way Cooper did, the same way Richard returned from Florida: by means of a time portal of some sort, somehow related to the Island's special electromagnetic properties and to its apparent geographic unplottability.

Ben used his "magic box," capable of transporting humans -- or polar bears -- across time and space. That's probably how Ben gets back and forth to the Island on his secret little jaunts abroad, too.

This time-travel secret is why the Island has been kept so hidden. This is why the Others developed a sort of supernatural cult around its mystical, seemingly magic properties. That may also be why Ben is so certain about what will happen if the Lostaways leave the Island, or if the Freighter Four arrive there. He may have literally seen the post-Island future in all its bleakness.

This is also why the Dharma and Widmore people want the Island back so badly. It's an incredibly powerful, classified resource, and they aren't willing to give it up, no matter who has to die.