I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. I think it’s like the Lusitania, in a way.
Basically, the people who were attacking the ship thought they were doing what they were supposed to.
However, the higher ups did NOT order them too.
I don’t believe they thought it was the El Quiseir.
Guin…So you think the pilots just went out and did it on their own??
“It’s amazingly similar except that it’s a US plane and British troops”
Not at all. In comparison to the ground vehicles and troops, the Liberty was a very large target with large,visible equipment which distinguished it from any Egyptian ship. The Israelis had the opportunity for extensive reconnaisance and photography earlier in the day and could compare photos with those of Egyptian ships.
“If so, that would be a hard secret to keep – one of these witnesses would likely have stepped forward sometime in the intervening years.”
It’s not hard for a group of Israeli soldiers to keep quiet and not contradict the official story of their government especially when doing otherwise would reflect poorly on themselves and their country. So this isn’t much of a conspiracy.
Once again I suggest reading the article from the journal that I linked above. The sum of the evidence presented is very compelling.
<< Once again I suggest reading the article from the journal that I linked above. The sum of the evidence presented is very compelling. >>
If you read the websites of some of the moon-landing-was-a-hoax loonies, the sum of the evidence they present is very compelling as well. It just happens to be all distortion that ignores the explanations and real evidence.
It is certainly easy for the Americans on the ship to be able to see their flag and assume that Israeli pilots (coming through thick fog) can also see the flag. The point is that most of the “evidence” of a deliberate Israeli attack comes from the survivors on the Liberty. Most of the counter evidence comes from the Israeli pilots, the Israeli command, the intercepted radio signals, the several independent investigations, and common sense.
It sure as hell isn’t much of a conspiracy – there were open and independent investigations, several, over the years.
In fact, the Israelis thought the ship was Russian, not Egyptian, and they were very concerned about firing upon it – because Russian entry in the war would have been disastrous for the world.
Could you clarify this remark?
Bah. What a non-issue, and over 30 years old at that.
“Friendly fire” is a problem as old as war. The Americans seem to be particularly prone to fire-control and target identification problems - as recent events have demonstrated.
Those who approach too close to a theatre of war put themselves at risk. I don’t imagine that there was any “conspiracy” behind the American pilots who bombed our Canadian troops in Afganistan - and that was with recognition technology more than 30 years in advance of what the Israelis had.
In this case, the “conspiracy” charge seems particularly lame. In order to work, it must assume:
(a) that the Israelis had a compelling reason to destroy the ship (presumably risking war against the world’s most powerful country if caught); and
(b) an equally compelling reason for the US to cover the matter up.
The explaination given for (b) is that the Israeli lobby was sufficiently strong to have the matter hushed. If the lobby had that much influence over the US, why would the Israelis have bothered to bomb the ship? Surely it would be an easier matter to hush up whatever information the ship uncovered, than the destruction of a ship and the deaths of US servicemen!
In other words, the explaination for (b) contradicts the motive for (a).
Is it more likely that the desire to see this as a conspiracy is a combination of (a) a mistaken belief in Israeli military omniscience; and (b) a strong desire to see the Israelis as tretcherous villians, at a time when events are driving these two countries into the same camp more powerfully than ever? You be the judge. 
CyberPundit: the explanations that Bamford puts forth still do not take into account why the Israeli’s called off the attack and offered assistance nor why they attacked in planes and boats that were clearly identifiable as Israeli. I doubt the Israeli’s believed they could eliminate all witnesses without the attackers being identified as Israeli.
And as demonstrated by the sheer number of friendly fire incidents happening in the current Iraqi fracas, even with the advent of more advanced identification systems, war is helluva confusing with mixed signals and crossed lines become rather regular.
“If you read the websites of some of the moon-landing-was-a-hoax loonies, the sum of the evidence they present is very compelling as well”
Are there any articles supporting moon-landing in academic journals? The comparison is ridiculous. I will note again that eminent public officials officials like Dean Rusk have come out saying that they thought the attack was deliberate.
“The point is that most of the “evidence” of a deliberate Israeli attack comes from the survivors on the Liberty”
No a lot of the evidence comes from NSA intercepts and the like.
For instance:
“Immediately preceding the attack, an Israeli pilot
recognized Liberty as a U.S. ship and radioed this information to
IDF headquarters. He was instructed to attack anyway. This
dialogue was intercepted at the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Former
U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter revealed the existence
of this intercept in 1991.”
As for common sense it is one of the best arguments that the attack was deliberate for the simple reason that the Liberty doesn’t look at all like the Egyptian ship it was supposed to be mistaken for.
Once again the article in IJIC presents the evidence that the attack was deliberate. If someone wants to read and refute its arguments I would be interested.
I am less interested in bogus comparisons with friendly-fire incidents in the current war; I have already explained how the Liberty attack was completely different.
That should be “any article supporting moon-land hoaxes”
BTW Skip,
The Fishel article explains both points.
For those who believe that you cannot mistake a 4,000-ton ship for a 10,400-ton one: you should discuss this with the Japanese pilots at the battle of the Coral Sea, where they managed to mistake the destroyer Sims and the oiler Neosho for a carrier and a cruiser, an error of four or five hundred percent, not 250% as with mistaking the Quseir for the Liberty. Note also that in that very battle, American B-17s managed to mistake a U.S.-Australian cruiser force for Japanese and bombed it, fortunately inflicting no casualties.
I think that the comparison Danimal just made may be a trifle more difficult to ridicule as “bogus”. Though when you think about it, “friendly fire” in the modern era (whether by land or sea) is less explicable, not more - technology having evolved somewhat over the last 35 years.
If you only want to discuss the evidence you have selected, your argument will be a lonely one.
Still, I would be interested in what possible motivation there may have been for this “deliberate attack”. An equally compelling reason to cover it up, as I have indicated, would be required… as well as an explaination as to why the one does not contradict the other.
Like I said I don’t know of any friendly fire incidents in recent decades involving a large ship with large equipment which distinguished it from any enemy ship sailing in clear weather. If you have any comparable examples I would be interested.
I have already given one explanation ,by Bamford, for the attack. The Fishel article also discusses possible motivation.
Your argument about “contradiction” doesn’t make much sense. Obviously the Israelis didn’t know upfront for sure that the attack would be covered up. They had to make a guess about whether attacking and denying it later would be less risky than letting the ship continue monitoring their activities. They decided to attack and from their pov. it worked out.
“If you only want to discuss the evidence you have selected, your argument will be a lonely one.”
I have presented convincing evidence which makes it very difficult to believe that the attack was not deliberate. Presumably those who believe otherwise would be able to refute it but all I seem to find are bogus comparisons with moon-landing hoaxes.
BTW this is an excellent source on the incident including the investigations by a scholar who wrote a dissertation on the topic. It has an especially good description about the problems
with the official investigation after the incident.
http://www.logogo.net/12crew.htm
I don’t know the details of the WW2 incidents that Danimal describes. Let me repeat that it wasn’t just size differences but:
1)the large, visible equipment which was different from the Egyptian ship.
2)the excellent weather.
3)the mulitple reconnaisance flights conducted by the Israelis
In addition you have sigint intercepts that indicate that the Israelis knew it was an American ship. I have already quoted one.
Here is another quote from the above web-site based on Bamford’s book:
"Marshall Carter, director of NSA, appointed a small task force led by Walter Deeley, a senior official of the agency, to keep track of all information on THE LIBERTY. Unlike other probes, this one included all the intercept tapes from the EC-121. In the end, Deeley came to the conclusion: “There was no way that they didn’t know THE LIBERTY was American”. NSA Director Carter agreed: “There was no other answer than that it was deliberate”, he told Bamford. NSA’s deputy director, Louis Tordella, agreed, and said this to Congressman George Mahon (D, Tex.), a member of a small “working group” in Congress investigating the matter. Deputy chief John Morrison, a US Air Force Major General, agreed, saying that, “The only conjecture we ever made that made any sense is that the Israelis did not want us to intercept their communications at that time.” "
If you add up all this evidence I think it’s ovewhelming.
Actually, thw WW2 references are rather closer in time to the '67 war than the Gulf War 2 references are to the '67 war (1942-1967 = 25 years; 1967-2003 = 36 years). What do you mean by “recent decades”? 1967 is hardly “recent”! That merits a :rolleyes:
The supposed reason for the conspiracy - to cover up whatever the ship was monitoring - is thin in the extreme. Are you saying that Israel simply gambled that the US would not notice or care that one of their ships was attacked - and that this gamble was less risky than allowing the ship to report on the [nefarious Israeli evils] that the ship was detecting?
:eek:
The fact is, the assumption [even if you don’t state it] is that the Israelis knew that they could “get away with it” because of their powerful lobby in Washington.
Of course, if the knew that, why did they bother to attack? Their powerful lobby could have covered up whatever [nefarious Israeli evils] the ship detected without an attack, if it was that powerful.
Of course, if their lobby was not powerful, why did the Israelis think they could get away with an attack? They would have had to be incredibly stupid - and lucky.
That is the contradiction, whether you can understand it or not.
As for your link, it is a pure polemic. Is this your “overwhelming” evidence?
“Speculation as to the Israeli motivation varied. Some NSA men believed that Israel expected the destruction of the ship would lead the US to blame Egypt and bring the US into the war on the side of Israel. Others felt that Israeli forces simply wanted the ship out of the way. The NSA men knew what the tapes told; but they were surprised to find that some senior officials in Washington wanted above all to protect Israel from embarrassment. Tordella recorded his dissent when told that some unnamed Washington authorities wanted to order the LIBERTY sunk in order that newsmen could not photograph her and inflame public opinion against Israel.”
Nice attribution to independently-verifiable sources - “some unnamed Washington authorities” - complete with completely unbelievable crap - an accusation that the USA wanted to sink the Liberty, so that Israelis would not be embarrased by the exposure of its crime!
I would be embarrased, quoting this stuff as if it were convincing.
It is kind of hard to contradict “evidence” presented from some secret agency, quoting “unnamed Washington sources” for accusations of cover-ups. Evidence better than this was presented on the moon-hoax sites.
I’ve never quite followed the logic of this. The conspiracy theorists assert that the Israelis had and have so much “pull” with the U.S. government that they were able to persuade us to ignore a (according to the conspiracy theorists) deliberate attack on a U.S. Navy vessel resulting in the deaths of a number of Americans. (There were no U.S. retaliatory strikes against Israel, no economic sanctions, no diplomatic break.) But if Israel had and has that much influence over the U.S. government, wouldn’t it be a lot simpler and less risky to just ask the U.S. government to ignore Israel’s alleged massacres of Egyptian POW’s? At that time, Israel was a U.S. ally, and Egypt was a Soviet client.
Malthus,
I have already explained what distinguishes the LIberty attack:
"1)the large, visible equipment which was different from the Egyptian ship.
2)the excellent weather.
3)the mulitple reconnaisance flights conducted by the Israelis
In addition you have sigint intercepts that indicate that the Israelis knew it was an American ship."
If you a specific example from WW2 which is similar I would like to hear about it. Danimal’s example doesn’t give nearly enough details to suggest that they are comparable.
“As for your link, it is a pure polemic. Is this your “overwhelming” evidence?”
Nonsense. One of them is an article in an a academic journal. The other is based on a Phd dissertation on the topic. As such both are highly credible.
As for quotes have you even read my post? I have provided quotes from NSA director, deputy director and an Air Force General.
You have taken one specific paragraph without quotes ,ignored the pargraph which I specifically put up which has
extensive quotations and then claimed that the link is pure polemic. Pathetic.
ME Buckner,
“The conspiracy theorists assert that the Israelis had and have so much “pull” with the U.S. government that they were able to persuade us to ignore a (according to the conspiracy theorists) deliberate attack on a U.S. Navy vessel resulting in the deaths of a number of Americans.”
I think the Israelis thought they could get away with saying they were sorry for the attack but that it was an honest mistake. Since this is exactly what happened I don’t see why this is so hard to believe. It was a gamble and it seemed to work out for them.
If you believe that the attack was not deliberate perhaps you would like to explain the two independent signal intercepts which show the Israelis knew, as well as the points about visibility, equipment, size, reconnaisance etc.
BTW a list of government officials who don’t believe the Israeli conspiracy would be useful.
1)Secretary of State Dean Rusk
2)Under SoS George Ball
3)Admiral Moorer
4)NSA Director and Deputy Director
5)US Ambassador to Lebanon
6)A US AirForce Major-General
Pretending that this is some kind of wacky conspiracy theory is simply not possible.
That should be “government officials who don’t believe the Israeli story”.
BTW Malthus, I realize you may not have read my 2:42 post when you wrote your reply. In that case you probably don’t deserve to be called pathetic.
The point remains that the passage I put up from the site contains quotes from several highly credible people and the person who made that website wrote a dissertation on the topic and obviously knows what he is talking about.
CyberPundit – have you read that guy’s dissertation? Because he doesn’t seem to have a lot of answers, only a long list of questions and conflicting claims. His main conclusion seems to be that there’s a whole lot of conflicting testimony.
As for at least one of the signal intercepts, that’s based on the testimony of one person who claims he read a CIA transcript which then disappeared and has never been seen again. I’d want to see that transcript (and have it translated by a native Hebrew speaker) before I accepted it as genuine.
Although the visible antennas were different from the Egyptian ship, the Liberty was a converted freighter. So I could understand a pilot who was expecting to see a freighter seeing what he expected to see.
This just in: the report of Liberty displacing 10,400 tons, from the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence that CyberPundit cited is probably mistaken. According to the U.S. Navy Liberty displaced 7,725 tons. You can see some good pictures of the ship at that link, and there are further links showing the damage inflicted by the Israeli attack.
A.J. Cristol has put together an extremely detailed timeline of the tragedy, with every fact attributed to a source, usually primary. On page 28, it refutes Bamford’s claim that Liberty “never fired a shot,” by citing Liberty’s own deck log which records that the sailors fired their starboard machine guns at the Israeli torpedo boats. That the sailors would fire is quite understandable in the circumstances, but probably contributed to the tragic decision to reverse the earlier directions form Israeli higher headquarters ordering the torpedo boats not to attack. It is also apparent from the timeline that the Israelis believed their troops in the Egyptian town of El Arish were taking fire from an Egyptian warship. Liberty itself confirms the explosions in El Arish, although it remains unclear if these were from land or sea. Thus it makes perfect sense that the Israelis expected to find an Egyptian warship in the area. The flight of Israeli Mirages were ordered, “If it’s a warship, blast it.” According to their radio conversations with the torpedo boats, the Mirages identified the Liberty as a warship, did not stop to ascertain nationality (the Israelis had been assured that there were no U.S. ships within 100 miles of the war zone), and attacked.
CyberPundit asked about similarity of conditions between Coral Sea and the Liberty attack. I would venture to say that there is a rather large difference in equipment between an aircraft carrier and an oiler, namely that one has a completely flat weather deck and the other does not. The difference between Liberty and the Egyptian ship would pale in comparison. As for weather I’m not certain; there were several scattered squalls in the Coral Sea area while the fighting was going on, but I do not know if Sims and Neosho were in a rainy or a clear spot.
Wait a cotton picking minute here -
At first, you complained that people were ignoring your links: “Once again the article in IJIC presents the evidence that the attack was deliberate. If someone wants to read and refute its arguments I would be interested.”
Then, you posted a link - without extracting quotes - to which I replied. You characterized it as follows: “BTW this is an excellent source on the incident including the investigations by a scholar who wrote a dissertation on the topic. It has an especially good description about the problems
with the official investigation after the incident.
http://www.logogo.net/12crew.htm”
Sounds like it was, as you claimed, " an especially good description about the problems
with the official investigation after the incident".
I replied, demolishing the credibility of this source, pointing out it made an unbielievable claim (that some in the USA wanted to sink their own ship to save the Israelis from embarasment!) based on “unnamed Washington officials” - all hallmarks of a wacky conspiracy theory.
You replied in three ways:
Appeal to authority: “One of them is an article in an a academic journal. The other is based on a Phd dissertation on the topic. As such both are highly credible.”
(Falsely) claiming that you have extracted the relevant bits - so the rest must be ignored: “You have taken one specific paragraph without quotes ,ignored the pargraph which I specifically put up which has
extensive quotations and then claimed that the link is pure polemic.” - afterwards retracted. Even if you had extracted quotations, what makes you think that the credibility of this source cannot be impeached by reference to obvious nonsense in the same article? This I cannot fathom. If a science writer was writing an article on the moon, would not an assertion that the moon was made of green cheese at the end of the article make you wonder about the legitimacy of the rest?
The good old insult (afterwards retracted): “Pathetic.”.
The fact is, no-one is going to be impressed by appeals to authority or insults, all in support of a theory which appears to violate common sense.
It doesn’t help that this particular conspiracy claim is a staple of extreme conspiracy theorists: http://www.crescentlife.com/heal%20the%20world/did_israel_attack_wtc_&_pentagon.htm While such is not in and of itself evidence of the legitimacy (or otherwise) of the
claim, it is enough to make one critical of the sources and not accept everything at face value – obviously, there are lots of people out there who want the story to be true for reasons of their own.