Once again you are trying to put words in my mouth.Originally Posted by swampdragon
I'm not calling them liars or not taking their side.
I'm certain they felt like they were attacked....pretty obvious... because they were attacked.
I'm sure their side is perfectly true.
But it's still just one side, they lived through and saw just one part of what happened.
I have no doubt that from their perspective they are giving an accurate account.
In almost any other incident you would be correct. But the USS Liberty was a spy ship loaded with surveillance equipment as well as linguists.....some Jewish. Almost certainly the USS Liberty knew both sides.But it's still just one side..........
The NSA has never denied they have the information as to what really happened. In addition to the USS Liberty, there was an EC-121 Ferret aircraft orbiting the area scooping everything that transmitted into its recorders.
Wart
It's NOT just one part Kadmos.
We've already heard the Israeli side too, and it does not wash at all.
Even an Israeli pilot himself came forward and stated the Command Center knew full well it was the Liberty.
That's the only part that "IS" true.
Now I'm not saying friendly-fire accidents never happen. It does.
But the majority happen in the heat of battle with multiple moving pieces and poor visibility.
Not the way the Liberty incident happened at all.
Hell man, you and I are not trained navy pilots or torpedo boat captains, but....
I'll bet if somebody put me and you in a plane and flew us over a ship in broad daylight, and in 9 hours time, we buzzed the ship 13 frickin' times PURPOSELY doing a recon as our sole mission.....
I'm pretty sure we'd notice an American flag, the ship's name, the ships hull ID number, that it was 4 times bigger than the Al Quesar (which was in dry dock anyways at the time,) and looked nothing like it.
I'll bet me and you, being firearms owners, would have noticed the ship had no battle guns or cannons at all. A couple 50cals and that was it.
I'll bet we would have noticed it had 20 times more dishes and antennas than anything else ever to float at sea.
What do you think?
Do you think we could have ID'd it?
I sure do.
Swampy we've been over this.
It wasn't the same plane overflying it for 9 hours. A plane overflew it, ID'd it correctly, then it was later taken off the board at shift change as old info.
The next plane that overflew it was told a ship from the area had shelled Israeli ground troops, that pilot wasn't told about American ships in the area, because there weren't supposed to be US ships there.
He saw it didn't have the Israeli markings and got permission to fire, he fired.
The torpedo boats were fired on, so they fired.
Wart, the "NSA not denying they have info" is not the same as the NSA actually having info. If the Liberty or the NSA had incriminating info then they don't appear to be saying...which proves nothing...except to conspiracy theorists, who somehow manage to believe that the lack of someone having info, or not denying they have info somehow means 100% conclusive proof
I didn't say it was the same plane.
In fact, this helps demonstrate my point.
If it had been only one plane, then I could have chalked it up to that one particular crew being incompetent.
But multiple planes surely knew.
Again, this story just doesn't wash.
As you said yourself earlier, Israel was at war.
"Shift change" has nothing to do with it.
I've worked first hand in Command Centers.
There is ALWAYS an overlap of personnel, briefings and debriefings at the end of every watch and start of a new one.
Stuff doesn't just get tossed and people walk off.
It doesn't work that way in any military...especially during war-time for sure!
Israel was flying unmarked aircraft because they KNEW the communications ability of the ship.
They didn't want the ship to broadcast to the world that it was ISRAEL who was attacking them.
That would have ruined the entire covert plan completely.
Lucky for us, and too damn bad for them however, the ship didn't sink as planned and the crew survived.
This too ruined the plan.
Were the Israeli planes unmarked or were the markings just not seen?
You worked an Israeli command center in 1967? If not then you have no clue how they did things.
The different planes makes it more likely, as the first plane would have known it was American, the next planes were told there was a ship in the area suspected of attacking land troops. By then they were no where near where the US ship had been seen earlier. They knew Israeli ships had a white "X" painted on the deck, and that pretty much anything else in the area had to be an enemy ship.
The pilots were a bit trigger happy in the middle of a war, it happens.
It sucks, but it happens.
You still haven't presented any good reason to attack an American ship.
So what if it was a spy ship, that wouldn't have been worth attacking an American ship...nothing would have been worth that!
Where were the secondary attacks on the US? Why not keep on the offensive against America? Why weren't they trying to destroy our entire fleet? Sorry it's ridiculous.
So now you think the plan was to sink the ship and kill all onboard? Why didn't they finish the job?
Why do it at all?
They had much more important things to do than try to start a war they knew they couldn't win, right in the middle of another war.
You act like the only thing they did that day was deal with this one US ship. It was an all out war for Israel, a lot happened in those six days.
Sorry, but it makes absolutely no sense.
The planes were unmarked.
The only thing that "was" marked was the torpedo boats that showed up later to finish off the ship after it was hoped all the commo ability had been wiped out by the unmarked jets.
I was only 3 in '67, but command centers are much more professional than this.
Israel was GOOD at this stuff.
That's why they won the 6 day war.
They would not have made such an amature mistake like that.
There was no need for further attacks on the US.
They were already exposed by then when the initial plan failed.
They didn't want to conquer us.
They wanted to sink the Liberty and make it look like Egypt did it.
That would get us in the war on Israel's side so they thought.
Israel had no idea at the time the war would only last 6 days.
A full scale offensive against the US was never the plan in the first place.
...Just to add to that a little Kadmos,
Another reason I don't buy Israel's story about the Liberty being an accident (in addition to their story being completely full of holes) is because Israel already had a previous history of this type of terrorist behavior against us too.
And not only that, but they gave each other AWARDS for it!
...Not to mention the whole 9/11 thing too.
*****The Lavon Affair refers to the scandal over a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Susannah, in which Israeli military intelligence bombed Egyptian, American and British-owned targets in Egypt in the summer of 1954.
It became known as the Lavon Affair after the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or euphemistically as the Unfortunate Affair.
Israel admitted responsibility in 2005 when Israeli President Moshe Katzav honored the nine Egyptian Jewish agents who were involved.*******
This was no accident either Kadmos.
I'm sorry to be the one to bring the bad news, but Israel truly only cares about Israel...not us. And they have never been our ally.
Do they want our technology?
Yep.
Do they want our money?
Yep.
But that's about it.
How do you know the planes were unmarked? Is this because the sailors on the Liberty didn't see markings? Just like the pilots didn't see the marking on the ship?
Yes they were good at their jobs, their jobs were to destroy the enemy, sadly that mindset doesn't always allow for the extra time to make 100% sure that the vessel being targeted isn't neutral, the mindset becomes "there is us and there is them, try not to destroy us".
Sorry but the "drag the US into the war" theory is ridiculous.
By the night of the 5th the Egyptian Air force was destroyed, by the 7th it was clear that Israel was going to take control of the Sinai. By the 8th (the day of the Liberty) the Egyptian front was basically held, any Egyptian troops left in the Sinai were in retreat.
Add to that the fact that the US was very clear it wasn't getting involved from the get go, Russia was backing the Arabs, especially Egypt. Egypt wasn't likely to attack a US ship on purpose. If they had Russia would have been pissed.
If the idea was to attack a US ship and make it look like Egypt had done it, then why not fly Egyptian flags rather than Israeli flags...seems like kind of an important, and obvious, detail to that plan. Or at the very least pull down the Israeli flags...
Why stop the attack? The Israelis pulled off long before the US got there, why not press the attack and destroy the ship?
Why admit to the incident so quickly afterwords? It was less than 2 hours after the attack started that the Israelis came to us telling of the fuck up...why not wait at least a little bit to see how it played out?
Sorry but your best motive for this is really rather lame, full of holes, and has absolutely no follow through to support it.
Even if the plan made sense the risk of being exposed wouldn't have been worth the potential reward,
So after the complete failure and humiliation of the Lavon affair, which BTW was specially engineered to harm no one, and no one was hurt, the Israelis thought the same sort of plan would somehow work this time, but should go even further and kill a couple hundred sailors and destroy a US ship?
Makes even less sense when you add in that incident.
The planes weren't marked because they weren't marked.
The torpedo boats were.
That's why the boats were ID'd as Israeli.
The jets were low enough to drop napalm on the ship, and they made repeated returns.
They were clearly visible.
Yet our guys managed under fire to recognize the markings on the torpedo boats.
But Israel couldn't ID the markings on a ship 10 times bigger?
Uhhhh.
I don't think so Kadmos.
Not only that, but the ship raised 3 different flags throughout the course of the attack too. One of them was a Holiday Flag. Holiday Flags are so big, you can see them from miles and miles away.
None of this has to make any sense to you. To me either for that matter.
It just is what it is.
Israel knew it was the Liberty and attacked it anyways.
With the full intention of sinking it and killing every possible witness, right down to repeatedly strafing the life rafts too in order to ensure NOBODY would be left to blab.
***Fifteen years after the attack, an Israeli pilot approached Liberty survivors and then held extensive interviews with former Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey about his role. According to this senior Israeli lead pilot, he recognized the Liberty as American immediately, so informed his headquarters, and was told to ignore the American flag and continue his attack. He refused to do so and returned to base, where he was arrested.***
I feel sorry for this guy. He seems to be the only one trying to do the right thing.
I'll see if I can find his name and more about him.
If you find it, let me know.
Israel saw no need to "wait" to see how it played out.
They already knew a message had got out and they were busted. It became immediate damage control at that point once busted.
2+2 does equal 4.
I never said it makes sense.
Israelis are crazy.
If I come burn down your house, will it be OK, so long as I do it while nobody is home and you don't get hurt?
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