# USS Liberty (I know, again): but new sworn testimony of cover up **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 23, 2003, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uss-liberty-i-know-again-but-new-sworn-testimony-of-cover-up/209090 "2003-10-23T12:18:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2003, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uss-liberty-i-know-again-but-new-sworn-testimony-of-cover-up/209090/41 "2003-10-28T00:52:34Z")
Bryan- sure and I accept that- if it was one attack. Screw-ups happen. But not over & over for an hour & a half, by several sources. Noone Special- so they had some reason to suppose there were no _US_ ships in the area. :dubious: So how about Brit, Russian, Greek, Italian, etc etc? Like I said- if you had a ship in that area- that was unidentified the chance it was Egyptian was small, and the chance of it being neutral very large. Thus, ipso facto- they had no business attacking any ship without positive ID. And he admited he didn’t have it. Next “US said it had no ships within hundreds of miles… a few days earlier”. A not-to-fast ship moves at something like 15MPH. That’s 360 miles per day. Thus in ONE day a moderately slow ship could move that “hundreds of miles”. “Isreal had asked that US ships be removed…”- since when does a Nuetral have to move it’s ships around in INTERNATIONAL WATERS by the request of a minor power? Again- Isreal here admits they did NOT have a POSITIVE ID. They had no business attacking any ship in that area during that “war” without such. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2003, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uss-liberty-i-know-again-but-new-sworn-testimony-of-cover-up/209090/42 "2003-10-28T03:16:57Z")
Even a massive screwup is more plausible than some patently silly plot. ---
**Author:** ![jamcracker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@jamcracker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jamcracker)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2003, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uss-liberty-i-know-again-but-new-sworn-testimony-of-cover-up/209090/43 "2003-10-28T06:10:55Z")
I hadn’t heard this story before last week. All I know came from cites in this thread and from a excerpt of a documentary I saw this morning. There’s one thing that bugs me and that hasn’t been brought up here. I saw crew members confirm this account in that excerpt of documentary film I saw today. I’ll quote from [an earlier cite in this thread](http://www.usni.org/proceedings/Articles03/PROwalsh06.htm#fn5): > [@](#): > > … Concurrently, the MTBs [Motor Torpedo Boats] circled to within 40 or 50 feet. Then, over a 40-minute span, according to U.S. Navy eyewitnesses, the boats’ gunners loosed heavy automatic weapons at stretcher bearers, fire-control teams, and other men still upright on the decks. > > The Liberty’s motor whale boat had been destroyed, and few life rafts survived. But [Lt. Painter] organized three undamaged ones and kicked them over the gunwales. Two were shot to pieces immediately in the water, the third hauled aboard one of the torpedo boats. … If the account of the attack and capture of the life rafts is accurate, and you apply Occam’s Razor, why did the attackers sink 2 life rafts and capture another? I’m forced to arrive at an evil conclusion about the motives of the attackers, or to believe the account is false. Is this in dispute? The article I quoted says “Israel insists that all shooting ceased immediately after the torpedo attack.” What do y’all think? Did the attackers shoot and capture life rafts, or is it fiction? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uss-liberty-i-know-again-but-new-sworn-testimony-of-cover-up/209090.md?page=2)