USS Liberty

Yeah, things are tough all over.

In reading this thread (heaven help me), what leaps out is people saying, over and over again, that Israel owned up, paid compensation, so on so forth. But Roundhead (when will the Cavaliers show up, I wonder) and Cpl Fantastic seem unable to accept that. They claim, I think, that there has to be something more. What is that more that they want? That's my question.
 
I've put my faith in the crew for this one, by their own words they've been lied to, told to shut up and pushed under the carpet.
 
Cpt.Fantastic said:
I've put my faith in the crew for this one, by their own words they've been lied to, told to shut up and pushed under the carpet.
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OK, that's your position. But again, as I ask in post 61, what is the "more" you are looking for? Israel owned up to the attack and paid compensation. You seem to want more than that. What is the "more"?

I'd ask Roundhead the same.
 
Well it has been covered up as an friendly fire incident where the crew's testimony completely contradicts this.

It is obvious it has been covered up upon looking at the 14 reports (not that I've read them all) as they all claim the opposite to the crew's testimony. They where told in very harsh words not to talk about it and most of the crew didn't say anything for 20 + years.

We're not even really debating what happened, we're debating pre-held conceptions as to what can and cannot happen. Obviously this cannot happen under the preconceptions of many therefore the crew are wrong.

So unless the crew are Jew Haters and Holocaust deniers I've no reason to contradict their testimony.



Given Israel did intentionally attack the vessel it raises many questions as to why. This is much harder to figure out than whether or not the ship was intentionally attacked.
 
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My impression is that, in fact, there is not complete agreement among the survivors. (If there were complete agreement, I'd be suspicious.) But that's beside the point.

OK, what's your remedy? More compensation from Israel? Medals from the US for those killed and injured (or for everyone; I don't know how these things are handled, typically)? An armed strike against Tel Aviv as retribution?

I still don't know what your point is, or what your proposed remedy is. A public trial of the Israeli individuals who were immediately involved? The commanders involved? It's too late for the government leaders, who probably all have died in the interim. That generation of Israeli politicians is gone, except Peres I suppose.

Do people remember ... There was a fellow obsessed with the possible image of the Liberty's mast in some photos and what it did or did not mean. Boy, there was a character.

ETA: I await. Roundhead, you may answer as well. I've heard this argument a number of times and never understood what was expected.
 
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SDC said:
OK, what's your remedy? More compensation from Israel? Medals from the US for those killed and injured (or for everyone; I don't know how these things are handled, typically)? An armed strike against Tel Aviv as retribution?

I still don't know what your point is, or what your proposed remedy is. A public trial of the Israeli individuals who were immediately involved? The commanders involved? It's too late for the government leaders, who probably all have died in the interim. That generation of Israeli politicians is gone, except Peres I suppose.
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Sorry didn't understand what you were getting at exactly, a very good question indeed.

First a better understanding of the events must first happen, the independent investigation was a good start but as we see a lot of people still won't accept what happened. Not that I see this happening for given the commissions reports are fact no-one in the United States Government or the Israeli Government would want to see it.

And before anything else happens the motives must first be understood, I'm not asking for Israel to be dragged across hot coals. I don't know why the attack happened so making recommendations is pointless.
 
SDC said:
Do people remember ... There was a fellow obsessed with the possible image of the Liberty's mast in some photos and what it did or did not mean. Boy, there was a character.
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Ah yes. Good times.
 
Well, you are convinced, mostly I think by the survivors' accounts, that it must have been deliberate. (The other sources brought in by roundhead seem weak.) Well, it was certainly deliberate in the sense that some people actually did something. If they knew it was an American ship, which I think you believe, then you need to consider motive. And you have to ask how high up the chain of command the decision went. Motive could be as simple as giving a bloody nose to a foreign ship in wartime. (Remember, Israel was much less dependent on US support in 1967.) It would be hard to figure any other special motive -- if the idea was to slaughter the whole crew so that the Egyptians might somehow be blamed, then they did a damned poor job of it.

As for the chain of command, I know nothing about how such things work and couldn't give anything like a halfway sensible opinion.

The only thing I do believe which is relevant is that war is a goddamned untidy mess. As Napoleon (?) said, no plan survives the first encounter.
 
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Cpt.Fantastic said:
I've put my faith in the crew for this one, by their own words they've been lied to, told to shut up and pushed under the carpet.
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I have not put that much faith in the crew's statements, especially the embellished accounts by the more 'hotheaded' crew members, such as Ennes, who is clearly embellishing, and has added to his tale as the years go by.

As was mentioned earlier, nothing has kept the crews quiet. Some were talking about it being deliberate from the start.

But their basis is weak. They are sailors and they assume by flying the US flag and having some numbers on the side makes them as identifiable to anyone. That simply is not true and I think several of my posts in this thread make that clear.

The independent investigation is, in my very informed opinion, a sham. It was a self-selected group making up a kangaroo court that was led by an Admiral who has an open and virulent anti-Isreali agenda, as well as several other crackpot opinions as well.

Worse, he's a hypocrite of the FIRST ORDER! He was CNO during the naval investigation yet he signed off on the reports from the Naval investigation that stated without any doubt that the attack was an accident! This Admiral has so little integrity that he wouldn't stick out his neck to get to the bottom of the matter? Spare me.

Five congressional investigations have been made concerning the Liberty under five very different congresses. All five have come to the same conclusion: It was an accident. All the documents indicate it, sworn testimony during investigations indicate it.

Its over, the Liberty Incident was an accident. All the added tales and misunderstandings won't change that.
 
kookbreaker said:
Five congressional investigations have been made concerning the Liberty under five very different congresses. All five have come to the same conclusion: It was an accident. All the documents indicate it, sworn testimony during investigations indicate it.
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I was under the impression this was a lie, can you provide evidence please? I'm interested.
 
SDC said:
Do people remember ... There was a fellow obsessed with the possible image of the Liberty's mast in some photos and what it did or did not mean. Boy, there was a character.
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I do indeed - two of the links I posted further up are David Carmichael threads.
 
roundhead said:
Nowicki only listened after some time, and hadnt been listening to the intercepts at all, until told to.
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So let me get this straight, you provide a list of people who either freely admit to not listening to any intercepts, claim to have listened but can't prove it or claim to have listened to something that doesn't exist, and you are now complaining that someone who contradicts you isn't any good because he only listened to intercepts after being told to. That's, well, a little inconsistent don't you think?
 
roundhead said:
I cede not in real time, but not that they werent aware of what the intercepts said.As US ambassadors, why wouldnt they be credible, and in the loop.
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Let me just ask: do you have any idea how silly that sounds?

The Chicago Tribune article that you yourself cited didn't say anything that you are now claiming. All that it said about Andrew Kilgore was that, after Dwight Porter had died, Kilgore said that he remembered that Porter once told him that Porter had once seen english translations of transcripts. That is all that the article says about Kilgore. Every single thing that Kilgore claimed to know about the Liberty came from Porter. That's not my opinion - that's what Kilgore himself said.

It is impossible for Kilgore to know more about the Liberty incident than Porter. It is impossible to say that he should know because he was "in the loop." Kilgore admitted that he didn't know anything that Porter told him. So, Kilgore can only ever be as credible as Porter.

And Kilgore might be far less credible. The reporter might be lying about Kilgore's comments; the reporter might be mistaken about Kilgore's comments; the reporter might not remember Kilgore's exact comments; Kilgore may have been lying about hearing anything from Porter; Kilgore's memory might be wrong about Porter; Kilgore may have misunderstood Porter; Porter may have been lying to Kilgore; Porter's memory might have been wrong; Porter might have misunderstood what he saw; etc.

And nobody can ask Porter because Porter was dead before Kilgore spoke about it.

Kilgore's testimony is nothing but hearsay.

He was not "in the loop." He doesn't claim to have been "in the loop." Your statement that he is a credible source is just plain silly.
 
SDC said:
OK, that's your position. But again, as I ask in post 61, what is the "more" you are looking for? Israel owned up to the attack and paid compensation. You seem to want more than that. What is the "more"?

I'd ask Roundhead the same.
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Yes, Israel owned up to the attack and paid compensation, but in doing so declared it simply a terrible accident and a mistake. However, if the attacks were done with Israeli prior knowledge of the ship being American, this changes everything. If this were true, your question of "what is the "more" you are looking for?" could be narrowed to:
Why was this attack deliberately made?

More from the Oct 2, 2007 Chicago Tribune story:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/servi...,0,1050179.story?page=6&coll=chi_business_ugc

Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, confirmed the existence of NSA transcripts.

Asked whether he had personally read such transcripts, Kirby replied, "I sure did. I certainly did."

"They said, 'We've got him in the zero,'" Kirby recalled, "whatever that meant -- I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, 'Can you see the flag?' They said 'Yes, it's U.S, it's U.S.' They said it several times, so there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind that they knew it."

Kirby, now 86 and retired in Texas, said the transcripts were "something that's bothered me all my life. I'm willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew."
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and also...
One set of transcripts apparently survived in the archives of the U.S. Army's intelligence school, then located at Ft. Holabird in Maryland.

W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel who spent eight years as chief of Middle East intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the transcripts were used as "course material" in an advanced class for intelligence officers on the clandestine interception of voice transmissions.

"The flight leader spoke to his base to report that he had the ship in view, that it was the same ship that he had been briefed on and that it was clearly marked with the U.S. flag," Lang recalled in an e-mail.

"The flight commander was reluctant," Lang said in a subsequent interview. "That was very clear. He didn't want to do this. He asked them a couple of times, 'Do you really want me to do this?' I've remembered it ever since. It was very striking. I've been harboring this memory for all these years."
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This is why there is a demand for a Liberty investigation. Some who suffer or lose loved ones will relentlessly seek the truth and justice. Israel should want to put this matter to rest once and for all.


2 Samuel 23:3
The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
 
So, Roundhead (any Cavaliers out there, too?) your point, your "more" is that you want another investigation which, presumably, will reveal the truth. Let's say it does. Then what? I asked Cpl Fantastic this: more compensation from Israel? a trial of the pilots or others? An armed strike on Tel Aviv in revenge? What?

If it was a deliberate attack -- of course, any action is "deliberate" in a sense -- the next questions become motive, and I refer to what I said earlier, that none seems forthcoming; and matters of chain of command, i.e. who makes the decision vs who carries them out, and I have nothing useful to say about them because I know nothing about how they work.
 
quicknthedead said:
Why was this attack deliberately made?
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Well, here's what we know: Liberty was a spy ship. It was sitting just off the coast of two countries who were at war. The US had denied that it had any ships in the area. Immediately after the attack, Israel admitted it.

So what is the absolute worst reason that Israel could have attacked? What is the most terrible, nefarious reason you can think of?

It couldn't have been a false-flag operation to make the US think that Egypt had attacked. Israel admitted it right away.

Let's say the following: Israel believed that the US did not fully support it in the war and, in fact, that the US was giving intelligence about its troop movements to the Egyptians. Egypt, after all, had nothing like the signals intelligence of the US or even of Israel. Its air force was almost non-existent by the time of the Liberty incident. It was basically blind to Israeli movements. And at the same time, the US did not favor Israeli expansion into the Sinai. And the US offered zero military support of the Israeli war effort.

So, let's agree that forty-one years ago, Israel purposefully attacked the Liberty with the intention of destroying it because they thought it was a threat to their war effort.

SO WHAT?

What should happen TODAY because of that?

If Israel admitted everything that I wrote above, what should happen?

What is the point of a new investigation, of knowing the "truth" or of anything else you want? What should happen as a result of your new investigation?

My guess is that you have no answer. Still, I wait to hear from any of the people who have been arguing in favor of a new investigation.
 
Reminds me of the calls for a new investigation into 9/11. Go ahead, good luck, don't think of using my taxpayer dollars. If your arguments are valid and your evidence good, you will win. Meanwhile, I'm not betting on that.
 
SDC said:
So, Roundhead (any Cavaliers out there, too?) your point, your "more" is that you want another investigation which, presumably, will reveal the truth. Let's say it does. Then what?
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and what if it doesnt? then do we call for a 12th inquiry? and a 13th? and a 14th until something agrees with the CTs

but what if it only finds israelis acted with the intentions of bringing the US into the war, do we need a 15th, 16th and 17th inquiry until we find pres johnson was involved too?

then more to find it was the illuminati, or the reptilians? every single investigation will be a whitewash to some nutjob
 
~enigma~ said:
To convince the naive and weak brained that Israel is evil because they are run by a zionist government so it is justified to hate, persecute and I personally wouldn't be surprised if this Aryan ******* said kill jews.
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You assume much here. I suggest you pop to a few of my posts on Israel and Israelis before making that assumption - because I was around when it happened and heard about it at the time and have seen/heard/read about it very much over the 41 years since it happened - and I am 90%* certain that it was known (that it was a US ship) to the Israelis at the time of the attacks- but I am in no way anti-Semitic and loathe those who are. I don't know the two guys who are agreeing on this - and I have no idea why now - but that they bring it up does not make them anti-semitic to me. They will have to go beyond this for that to happen.


*Two years ago I was 100% certain.
 
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