It is important to remember that the US was not allied with Israel at the time. Although Truman recognized Israel immediately upon its independence declaration, the US imposed an embargo on arms sales to Israel, but not to Arab countries, which lasted until the Kennedy administration, and even then arms for Israel were matched one-for-one with Arab arms sales; Eisenhower intervened in favor of Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis even though England and France were on Israel’s side (caused some serious ruptures with England and France). In 1967 LBJ pledged to be “neutral in thought, word, and deed” but was suspected, because of his Texas oilmen connections, to be pro-Arab. It was foolish for him to send a spy ship into the war zone without notification to anyone, and Israel either thought it was an Egyptian ship flying a false flag, or that the Liberty was relaying intelligence to Egypt (and for all we know, it may have been).
I wonder what any of us would do if we had a choice of randomly killing an American soldier or 100, or allowing WW III. I myself, God forbid, even if my closest family member were to die, would do so. I think.
Politicians and military types get paid to do just such things (although usually without the certainty of the family member’s death) for our benefit, you know, and do so every day.
Me personally putting a gun to random people’s heads…
Again you’re insisting on their plans requiring “murder” when they say nothing of the sort. Sinking a ship doesn’t automatically condemn the people on board to death. And, if you read the whole document, they make reference several times to having credible witnesses to rouse public ire. Who would be the witnesses in this case? The Cubans, of course, so the plan only works if they plan to rescue them, so they can be put in front of the media.
First off, the military blows up lots of stuff in practice all the time, without killing anyone. It’s part of their job.
Second, yes, if you look at the plans laid out, every example you cite for blowing up ships and the like makes explicit reference to drone ships and drone planes. In fact, it’s quite remarkable how far they go to avoid any actual fatalities.
There is one section dealing with false flag terrorist attacks in Florida, where they allow that in extreme cases, they might go so far at to “actually wound” some people. Check that - merely wounding people was labelled an extreme.
And here you go, like any good CTist, conjuring up notions of what I “don’t have a problem with”, just because I’m citing the actual details of the actual report, and not entertaining the common misconceptions of what this plan entailed.
No, of course I’m not okay with them using false flag events to create a war.
And neither were the people who weer in charge at the time. That’s why they rejected this plan, in its entirety.
But the point here is that, even a document that clearly shows that someone in authority gave serious consideration to such a plan just isn’t enough for the CTist crowd. They still need to sex it up with lurid tales of murder. Why aren’t the simple facts of the case enough for them?
Because then, they’d have to also acknowledge the simple fact that this plan was rejected. That doesn’t feed into their narrative of the Cartoonish Super Villainy they want the government to be engaged in. Instead of seeing this document as what it is - that is, evidence of how pretty whacked out the Cold War got for some people in power at the time - they insist on making it a part of their own fantasy.
So really, for those of us in the reality based community, this is a fascinating document, in that it highlights the insanity of both some of the leaders of that era, and the Conspiracy Theory mongers of today.
Yes, don’t forget in 1956 the Israeli/French/British takeover of Suez fizzled because the Americans refused to back it… While, by 1973 they were preparing to blow up the world to defend Israel.
And, of course, as I said before - if Saddam Hussein’s air force had fired a missile into an American naval vessel, killed a few sailors in the process, would the president have let it go, or immediately gone all apeshit and fired volleys of missiles and dropped bombs on Iraq?
You mean the Eisenhower who warned the country, on his way out, about the evils of the military industrial complex?
You mean the Kennedy who got the US deep into Vietnam?
Or the Nixon who finally got them out of a war he did not get the US into?
I think nobody in government had/has a lock on realpolitick vs. gobal strategies. They are all partly guilty…
As noted by others above:
I don’t see any plans within the linked to documents to kill American citizens. Not even sure any intent to kill refugees. As there are page and pargeraph numbers could you cite to specific location?
How can such a plan be considered so inthinkable when the current US administration defends its right to drone-kill its civilans outside of the battlefield without any warrants?
The CIA did plan to exhibit a US Airforce plane that had gunfire damage-the plan was to blame this on Castro’s forces, and use it as justification for a punitive attack on Castro.
The CIA has come up with some goofy schemes, but the Bay of Pigs takes the cake-no US fighter cover, wrong times used by invading forces, attack/invasion landing in a swamp (easily defended), and no backup plan.
those CIA spooks were real geniuses!:smack:
In case you’re serious, the current US administration defends its right to “drone-kill” its civilians based on the claim that they pose an imminent threat to the security of the USA or have been recently involved in such activities. Whether that is justifiable or not, some might consider it slightly different than deliberately killing innocent civilians as part of a false flag operation.
The North Koreans did not only kill a few sailors in the process of attacking a spy ship, but captured the ship and held the rest of the crew hostage for a year around the same time-- and no, we did not go apeshit and fire volleys of missiles and bombs. LBJ was in an even weaker position with regard to the Liberty than with regard to the Pueblo, because while spying on the North Koreans was something he had to technically deny, but was still quite acceptable to the public, spying on the Israelis was something he politically could not admit to having done, since the public thought the Israeli victory in the 6-day war was terrific, and the pro-Arab position became completely untenable.
The administration defends its right to bypass the constitution for convenience.
It’s the same thing qualitatively.
Uumm… simply and utterly - NOT TRUE!
Can we now stop BS, please?
You already caused enough damage with biased and intentionally misleading contribution. You are now being exposed as a fraud and should probably drop from the thread.
Cite?
That’s what’s subject to discussion and everyone can offer their view.
Enemy combatants do not have constitutional rights, US citizens or not.
This situation doesn’t rise to anywhere near the murder of Fred hampton.
It is not disputed that at some point the Israeli air force saw that the ship was flying a US flag. Whether they knew it was a US ship or continued to believe that it was an Egyptian ship flying a false flag has been disputed. It is also disputed whether the Liberty was sending intelligence to the Egyptian side: the Johnson Administration’s unwillingness ever to open up about what the Liberty was doing there in the first place has left that suspicion open.
One commentator suggested that the USA’s wimpy response to this was what convinced Saddam he could get away with taking over Kuwait.
Oh, I’m sure if Israelis were able to confirm with ship’s captain that it was indeed US ship you could find some improbable storyline to shred even that evidence.
:o
This commentator would suggest that nothing demonstrates cruel willingness than shooting down civilian aircraft with 290 onboard and then lying about circumstances -
I’m not out to “shred” any evidence; I am trying to point out that, for one thing, we don’t have all that much evidence, and for another, that people keep misreading the situation based on the assumption that the US and Israel have always been allies. At the time, if the Israelis did know it was a US ship, they may well have assumed that the US was intervening “deniably” on the Egyptian side, and that may have been a correct assumption.
There’s more evidence about USS Liberty than bin Laden did 9/11.
Yes, and the captain of the Stark was court-martialled for ignoring the Iraqi aircraft because he thought the Iraqis were “on our side”, whil the captain of the Vincennes was not for reacting forcefully to a percieved threat. Lesson for navy officers - if it looks like it’s an attack, better safe than sorry. Especially after the last guy ignored a possible threat and got hit. After all, a radical organization would not deliberately crash airliners into a target would they?
I find it odd the map in the Wiki article does not show the position of the ship(s).
in fact, the general comment I recall about that incident was that the Iranians were shocked how few people in the UN and diplomatic community took their side in this incident. The fact that an aircraft ignored repeated requests to stop approaching in the most volatile area in the world was perceived as stupid. Was it a communication error, arrogance, or a possible sneak attack - the captain had only minutes to decide what to do.
What he did not do, is wait like the Liberty or the Stark until it was too late.