Apologise if this has been done before but I have searched and it kept timing out.
Anyway I saw the doco today “Dead In The water” and it seemed very much like there has been a cover up. I am not clear about the reason but there seem little threads (and big ones) over the place.
Tell me what you think.
I think that some Israeli fighter pilots, in wartime, overly stressed, in an area where they were told there were no neutral ships, saw a ship they mistook for an Egyptian freighter and attacked it.
Yes, we’ve done this before.
No, no cover up.
As FinnAgain has pointed out this has been done before.
However, even if you just take a very broad view of the entire story, it just doesn’t make any sense that it would be a cover-up, for three reasons:
The official story - that the two sides, most notable Israel, simply screwed up - is wholly plausible and is supported by a lot of evidence.
No objective evidence of a cover up is known to exist, and
There’s no obvious benefit to Israel in attacking a U.S. Navy vessel.
So there’s no motive and no evidence for a cover up, and a lot of evidence for a screwup. So what do YOU think is more likely?
I think it’s a huge cover up. Basically it goes like this. The US government wanted to make it appear that the Israeli’s attacked the ship. So, they built a bunch of missiles shaped like Israeli fighters…and then they used nano-thermite attack the ship! They then simulated the Israeli fighters attacking the ship, but we all know that jet fuel simply can’t melt steel!
Plus there were space weasels involved…
-XT
Here…lemme fix that for you.
I am so not going to re-do this one. Finn and I went 20 rounds in the linked thread and its all there from my end if anyone cares.
To answer this though I will cut and paste from one of my responses in that thread:
I think the Wikipedia does a good job of summarizing the two sides of the story and overall I find the view that the Israelis knew it was an American ship quite persuasive. Apart from the details of the incident itself including the excellent visibility conditions and the large differences between the US and Egyptian ship, there seem to be a large number of senior US soldiers, diplomats and intelligence officials who have publicly expressed skepticism over the Israeli story. Admittedly some aspects of the story like the precise Israeli motives remain murky; various theories are discussed in the Wiki article. Ultimately we will probably have to wait for the full disclosure of classified documents at least on the US side before we understand the full story.
BTW I hadn’t read the 2007 Chicago Tribune articleon the incident before. I found this bit interesting:
This.
No-one has ever advanced any plausible explaination for a deliberate attack.
Friendly fire incidents are pretty frequent in war. No reason to prefer the elaborate consipracy theory (for what end?) then a simple screw-up.
You’ll evidently just repeat the same fictions. Evidently your user name fits well.
For those curious, really do read along on the linked thread. Mole used arguments based on obvious lies and liars to make a tenuous case, and his points now continue the trend of citing people who are making things up.
Claim: “They missed identified this how?”
Truth: I pointed out several times in the thread that both the Israeli and US investigations found that they did indeed identify the flag as US but that due to the fog of war they believed it to be an Arab ship most likely flying under false colors.
Claim: “three torpedo boats and helicopters (although the helicopters loaded with armed troops did nothing as at that point the word was out and they thought the Sixth Fleet was responding).”
Truth: I pointed out the facts on this one too. The torpedo boats approached and did not fire, instead hailing the Liberty. They only returned fire once they were fired upon first. Likewise, these “armed troop” packed helicopters were sent to identify survivors and as the fog of war was still confusing things, incarcerate Arab survivors or take American survivors for treatment.
Claim: “The Israelis jammed all American emergency channels.”
Truth: Possible but not determined. I’d spend more time on this one but since Mole has already retreated from the thread, there’s no point.
Claim: “The Israelis shot the life rafts the crew threw overboard when the ship seemed lost (looked more like murder than war where you generally capture surviving seamen).”
Truth: I pointed out the fiction behind this claim to Mole earlier, he seems to enjoy using it though. The truth is that despite the fiction, there was nobody in the life boats, they were kicked overboard and had already been shot when they were on the ship, and the officers who testified mentioned not one word about this supposed “machine gunning” since it’s imaginary.
Claim:“Once the ship got a call out the US Sixth Fleet launched planes in its defense. Robert McNamara recalled the strike. The fleet commander, thinking there may have been worry over the planes carrying nukes, launched a second sortie assuring no nukes were being carried. This was recalled as well by President Johnson.”
Elaboration: The US had denied having any ships within hundreds of miles of the combat zone. That they’d refuse to start a war with an ally over it is, shall we say, unsurprising. Or, as Mole might argue, proof of a dastardly Zionist Conspiracy!!!
Claim: "After the incident the survivng crew was warned on pain of court martial or prison to not talk about the event. "
Truth: This is yet another fiction, and one I debunked. We’re evidently well into a real life game of whack a mole (at least with an appropriately named poster). Contrary to the fiction, no such thing ever happened. The crew were prohibited from revealing classified information before the inquiry. As soon as the inquiry was completed, those requirements were removed.
You mean, like our intercepted spy tapes which clearly show exactly what the Israelis were thinking and saying and that they’d misidentified the ship as Arab?
Hrm, that was a short wait.
A screwup, followed by an attempt to cover up the screwup, should always be your default presumption.
Yah, except for those multiple investigations on both sides and the spy tapes and the facts and basic logic which shows that the CT of a “cover up” is fiction. The mistake was admitted, proven, and can only be challenged by cites like Mole’s who employ admitted liars claiming (only via hearsay after the relevant party luckily died) all sorts of things like that a US Navy inquiry was secretly modified so that people said the exact opposite of what they’d really said… and nobody noticed for 36 years. Or that a man who was a good friend of one of the debunkers of this CT really hated him and didn’t trust him (but lucky told nobody else and just luckily happened to die so that this ‘fact’ could be revealed).
~shrugs~
Folks really should see the linked thread. They can see how CT supporters like Mole have to go about supporting the fantasy and the lengths the CT has to go to in order to avoid the truth.
It’s all in the linked thread.
I’m happy to let the evidence I produced in that thread stand as is. It’s a damnsight more than you provided in there.
I’m in good company with my “fiction” though as these people agree with me:
[ul]
[li]Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence[/li]
[li]Dean Rusk, Secretary of State [/li]
[li]Clark M. Clifford, Counsel to the President[/li]
[li]Paul C. Warnke, General Counsel for the Department of Defense[/li]
[li]Captain Ward Boston, chief Navy attorney for the 1967 U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry into the Israeli attack[/li]
[li]George Ball, Undersecretary of State[/li]
[li]Captain Merlin Staring, Navy legal officer assigned to the inquiry (eventually became Judge Advocate General Of The Navy)[/li][/ul]
Not sure if the following were directly involved in the incident/original inquiry but still of note as being on record that the Israeli attack was more than a simple mistake:
[ul]
[li]Admiral Moorer was Chief of Naval Operations when this event occurred and went on to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff[/li]
[li]General Raymond G. Davis was Assistant Chief of Staff during this event and finished as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps[/li]
[li]Lieutenant General William Odom, NSA director[/li]
[li]Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, NSA director[/li]
[li]Marshal Carter, NSA director[/li]
[li]Oliver Kirby, NSA deputy director[/li]
[li]Major General John Morrison, NSA deputy director[/li]
[li]Ambassador Dwight Porter, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon in 1967[/li][/ul]
Again from the Tribune article, there are several US Air Force analysts who say that there was clear evidence that the Israelis knew it was an American ship:
I don’t believe these transcripts have been declassified.
Funny.
See post #9 in addition to the list I just provided.
Guess the NSA and Lyndon Johnson are CT loonies too then?
Like I said the sheer weight of senior US military and intelligence professionals who don’t believe the Israeli story is highly persuasive . I have never heard of any explanation for why they would say this if the Israeli story was in fact credible. Are they liars? Fools? Note that, for example, Clark Clifford was not only a highly respected public servant but a stalwart friend of Israel.
This is the conspiracy theory that, imho, has the most legs. Mostly due to the high level U.S. government officials that don’t buy the official story. A couple of issues that I would point out:
No Israeli motive: This is not entirely true. The U.S. and Israel were certainly not allies at that point. In fact, the U.S. was closer to Jordan at that point. It is within the realm of plausibility that the U.S. would be passing intercepted tactical information to the Jordanians. Israel was in a fight for her life, and was swinging wild at that point. It is within the realm of possibility that they would have taken out a U.S. ship if they believed that it was passing intelligence to their enemies. There is also the possibility of Soviet interception of U.S. transmissions being passed to the Arabs.
Recalling the airstrike: It was prudent to recall the air strike. First off, what exactly were they going to do? Shoot down a bunch of Israel’s aircraft in the middle of war? That could have led to Israel’s defeat, and I don’t think that’s something the U.S. wanted on their hands. Especially since a defeat would probably have led to a second holocaust. There is also the potential for the Soviets to misinterpret the purpose of the sortie as a strike on their allies. Plus, IIRC the flight time was ~2 hours to the Liberty. That is much too long to make a meaningful difference.
Yes, friendly fire incidents happen in war time. However, this isn’t a “oops I dropped a glass” accident. This is a “oops I tripped and grabbed your boobs” accident. The first happens all the time. The second theoretically could happen, but it is very difficult to believe it’s an accident, even when it was.
