Why wouldn’t they?
Are you seriously saying pilots, knowing that their orders are a mistake, and seeing that the ship was a United States Military Ship, would have no hesitation about carrying them out - possibly creating an international incident which could cause one of the world’s superpowers to become unfriendly at a time when the (tiny) country of Israel is fighting for its existence, let alone killing many totally innocent people for no reason?
Not true.
We can spin hypotheticals all day on why it played out like it did that would very reasonably have not informed the pilots ahead of time and all made sense as they saw it at the time.
Who knows why the military does what it does all the time? There are many instances in the past (albeit not like this one) where people in the future look back at some military thing and scratch their head and wonder, “WTF were they thinking?” Presumably at the time it all somehow made sense to them though. Hence the time honored military quip of SNAFU (situation normal, all fucked up). 
Unless the Israelis come clean and our government comes clean with all the available evidence I doubt any of us will ever know fore sure. I certainly won’t be holding my breath waiting for that.
It remains the NSA/CIA and numerous highly placed government and military officials, all the way to the President of the United States who was in the middle of it all, disagree with you and think the attack was deliberate. People who were there, people privy to info we do not have.
They might question the accuracy of the order when they saw that it was an American ship. When their controllers confirmed the accuracy of the orders, then yes, they would attack. Why wouldn’t they? Did any of our American pilots refuse to bomb Cambodia or Laos based on those countries being neutral?
Messed up I know but there is a reason military people are meant to follow orders and not question them.
The guy on the ground (or in the plane as it were) are not privy to all available information. Maybe Israel learned the US was secretly shipping a nuke to Egypt and wanted that ship dead. Maybe the ship was passing secrets to Egypt and thousands of Israeli soldiers were about to die if the ship wasn’t put on the bottom.
Crazy? Sure but who knows? It is not for the guy in the plane to second guess and the military command does not have the time or inclination to explain the why’s of every order. At most it is reasonable to call back for confirmation of an order that seems counter to what they are expecting but upon getting that order they are expected to carry it out.
Heck, we see this with our navy that day. They launched a rescue sortie and McNamara called it back. Thinking it was an issue over the planes carrying nukes they launched a second sortie that they made absolutely sure had no nukes. McNamara called that back. The commander of the aircraft carrier, not really able to believe such an order, asked for confirmation. The phone was handed to President Johnson who told them to bring the planes back. Despite a deeply ingrained notion that going to the aid of the Liberty is exactly the appropriate response and how could it possibly be wrong the commander on the scene recalled the second sortie. Those were his orders, he’d follow them, too bad for the crew of the Liberty.
No, because they were briefed that the targets were Vietnamese bases and outposts. BIG difference.
As proven by the fact that their own publicly available reports say it wasn’t deliberate.
The fact that the truth is diametrically opposed to your claims just shows how very right you are.
It’s almost as if you’re, yet again, reposting things that have been thoroughly debunked and while the actual CIA report and actual NSA report say nothing of the sort, it’s much easier to just play Lets Pretend and say they do.
Here, if your claim isn’t simple fiction, show anywhere that an official NSA or CIA statement says any such thing.
From the comments by Ward Boston quoted above:
*"Adm. Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.
We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew."*
So - Boston and Kidd purportedly knew they’d need at least six months to do a proper job of gathering evidence. But somehow, just a week’s inquiry utterly convinced them that the Israelis set out to murder the entire crew of the Liberty. Either they were dead wrong about what it took to do a proper job, were suddenly gifted with superhuman investigative powers or they reached a preordained conclusion.
Hey, yet another conspiracy theory. 
This is a standard line from conspiracy theory-believers. No matter how well the myriad questions and talking points get answered, there’s always something else that’s just got to be hidden away/covered up/buried deep in secret files that would prove the conspiracy theories true. If more gets declassified and released, there’s just got to be additional hidden evidence. It never stops.
I still don’t see that all the people quoted on alleged Israeli motivations manifest a continuing belief in a Grand Conspiracy.
Huh? The conspiracy is that Israel attacked the Liberty on purpose. If these people believe that Israel attacked the Liberty on purpose, then they believe in the “conspiracy theory” that Israel attacked the Liberty on purpose.
In the case of Laos and Cambodia, the pilots were if you like “in on the conspiracy” - they were told in advance of the mission that although these countries were neutral, there was military necessity for attacking communist forces located in 'em.
The ‘Grand’ part of this conspiracy comes from the claims that very high levels in this country ‘knew’ Israel attacked what it knew was a US ship. Those officials went to very great pains, for no discernible reason, to cover the whole thing up.
Wanting to avoid admitting, and being held accountable for, screwing up bigtime is a *highly *discernible reason.
It works both ways.
And you asked for quotes, got quotes, then hand wave them away?
I have the President of the United States, Secretary of State, CIA Directors, NSA Directors, NSA Deputy Directors, Counsel to the President, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admirals, Captains, Senators, Ambassadors and Naval Institute proceedings. Much of that from people actually involved at the time.
But that isn’t good enough for you? It is just not possible they have inside knowledge that we don’t? Because you are sure our government dutifully laid out all available evidence? It is unheard of for our government to cook the books (so to speak)?
I cannot imagine it getting much better than that.
“I can tell you for an absolute certainty (from intercepted communications) that the Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship.” - NSA Deputy Director Oliver Kirby
That the attack was deliberate “just wasn’t a disputed issue” within the National Security Agency. - Former NSA Director retired Army Lieutenant General William Odom
Former NSA/CIA Director Admiral Bobby Inman “flatly rejected” the Cristol/Israeli claims that the attack was an accident.
Of four former NSA/CIA seniors with inside knowledge, none was aware of any agency official who dissented from the position that the attack was deliberate.
What would those guys know about it right? Clearly CT loons with nothing to go on. Not like FinnAgain who is the only one with the straight dope on this. :rolleyes:
And yet again this makes no sense because the US didn’t screw up. They had nothing to hide and the conspiracy theory makes no sense as to why the NSA, CIA, despite creative writing to the contrary, the Navy and Conggres all were in on this grand conspiracy. Of course, as one of the highly authoratitive tinfoil hattists who’s been cited informs us, we covered everything up in a massive campaign of dishonesty across virtually our entire government because we didn’t have enough “courage” to stand up to a nation roughly the size of Rhode Island.
Moreover, as I’m sure someone may possibly, maybe, have mentioned in passing (:rolleyes:), that the Israelis acted deliberately to attack a target they knew was American makes no sense. They didn’t attack it with the right weaponry. They didn’t kill all the crew. They went in with clearly marked Israeli jets and boats with no effort made to disguise their nation of origin. And they would’ve let the most powerful nation on the planet know that they’d attacked their ship. And, of course, there’s no probable reason why it’d be attacked in the first place. The best we’ve gotten is some sort of nebulous “Well… there were secrets they could find!” Of course, we’re also told that the Israelis jammed the Liberty… which would mean they could prevent her from learning anything in any case and wouldn’t have had to attack.
But like most conspiracy theories, it requires that the conspirators be Genius Fools who act with both incredible precision and superhuman control and yet make such elementary mistakes that a five year old could improve their plan, while writing in crayon.
In this one, Israel screwed up.
Yes, it’s possible.
This isn’t a very convincing line - an appeal to authority and to secret knowledge, and to general opinions within certain gov’t agencies.
If that wasn’t clear enough, *both *governments wanted to avoid the mess of having the screwup become public, given the regional political and diplomatic situation at the time, so both played a role in trying to hide it.
Awwww, that’s about as true as your claim that the official NSA and CIA reports which clearly said that the incident was an accident really say that it wasn’t.
And of course, you’re going to provide a cite for that any time now. It’s interesting that when faced with the actual evidence, you need to craft a nice fiction about how I’m the only one who has the straight dope on this. Keep ignoring the NSA and CIA findings.
Or will you, instead, claim again that the NSA and CIA believed the exact opposite of what they published to the world and that nobody believed what their own analysts said, which is of course why no dissenting reports were ever published. Ever.
You’ll get those official NSA and CIA cites right away I’m sure, and not any more of these silly quotes, eh?
Don’t worry, I’m sure you’re relating fact and not fiction.
I’m sure you can prove it with an official statement from the NSA, and one from the CIA, saying that it wasn’t an accident.
Right? You’ll do that in your very next post, and apologize for being wrong.
You certainly won’t refuse to ever prove the fictional claim that the NSA and CIA ever said anything even remotely similar to your claim, when in fact they went on record saying the exact opposite, and you certainly won’t then go on to repeat it again and again and again and again.
Certainly.
Well, yes. That’s exactly what Finn and others are arguing.
It is those supporting the conspiracy who dispute it.
Mostly. Let us not forget that the USS Liberty was putting along in a war zone, and the US had told Israel there were no warships in the area.
Not that this puts the onus on the USA. But it was a factor in the blame.
Not enough to cover up at the highest levels of the US government.