Here is an article about it in the BBC, dated June 8, 2007: Why did Israel Attack the USS Liberty?
"It was a series of blunders by both the United States and Israel that resulted in a terrible tragedy and nothing more," says Jay Cristol, a federal judge and author of the book The Liberty Incident.
"All the official reports came to the same conclusion."
Well then, since our government would never lie to us, this must be what happened.
Here's an article in the Chicago Tribune, dated October 2, 2007: New revelations in attack on American spy ship
Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.
Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.
And here's what Ray McGovern has to say.
To their discredit, top Navy brass went along, and the Liberty survivors were threatened with court martial and prison if they so much as mentioned to their wives what had actually happened. They were enjoined as well from discussing it with one another. As Liberty crewman Don Pageler put it, "We all headed out after that, and we didn't talk to each other."
The circumstances were ready-made for serious Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I don't know whether the attack on the USS Liberty was an accident or not. I do know that we can't trust our government to tell us the truth about it. This is shameful, as has been the treatment of the ship's sailors.
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7 comments:
The story came to the public eye in a June 1976 article in Penthouse, which a friend of mine only bought for the articles.
So that's 35 years of stonewalling.
Yeah, the real events are hidden under 35 years of bullshite but the treatment of the sailors is, as usual, apalling.
The Israeli military has never been known for their restraint and proportionality. The US was (believe it or not) a neutral third party in the middle east in the sixties, rather than the unrestrained apologist for any and all Israeli actions we have come to be recognized for today.
So it really is not surprising that the Israeli high command decided that Liberty's ELINT capabilities constituted a threat to their war efforts, as that data could at least in theory be handed to the Egyptians in something near real time. And it should not come as a shock that their reaction to this perceived potential threat was to summarily destroy it and seek some kind of forgiveness later.
Every action, from USS Liberty to Sabra and Shatilla to Cast Lead to Mavi Marmmara should give us, along with Israels neighbors in the reason, pause. Because if anyone begins to think that there is some brutality, some act of inhuman slaughter, some monstrously destructive 'preemptive' act of violence that the current Israeli leadership would shrink from visiting upon ANYONE, friend, ally or enemy if they felt it might marginally improve her prospects, they are destined to once again be shocked by the horrors that await.
With friends like these...
Disgraceful!
That's it, BBBB. We pour money into that country year after year, and for what?
So they can stomp the Palestinians into the ground? Meanwhile, back here at home we're told we can't afford Social Security and Medicare.
And all the pandering to the Likudniks from Barack and Hillary isn't even enough for the wingnuts and AIPAC.
It's madness.
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Fascinating. Somehow I was not aware of this. In my defense, I was 9 when it happened.
I was only 7, W.C.
And I didn't hear about it until a few years ago.
We don't hear about it because our government doesn't want us to know about it.
In spite of all that happened in S.E. Asia, back in the day, and our government's spinning of same, we now know most of it.
But the rules are different when it comes to Israel and the Middle East.
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