If the IDF really had wanted the Liberty to be sunk they would have sunk it.
Friendly fire incidents happen.
Do you really think that it’s only the US military which shoots up it’s own troops?
For that matter, do you think that when the Israeli Air Force bombed one of their own armored columns just the day before do you think that wasn’t really a friendly-fire incident, but instead a deliberate strike to try and convince people the attack on the Liberty was an accident?
BTW, I should have said “attacked”, not “sunk”. Thank you for the link. The USN inquiry was charged with considering USN actions and was not charged with determining cause of the attack. The volunteered statement of accidental cause was Johnson administration policy before the inquiry concluded. If the IDF couldn’t identify a Victory class ship after extensive pre-attack aerial reconnaissance, they were blind. The Egyptian vessel cited in comparison by Wikipedia was much smaller. Israel was prepared at the time to sink anybody’s ELINT ship.
At sea or in the air, scale is much harder to judge. Moreover you have yet to answer a central inaccuracy in your story: if they were prepared to sink the ship, why were they not prepared with anti-ship weaponry and instead armed with anti-infantry weaponry?
I particularly enjoyed your insightful and detailed analysis of why a small, militarily inferior nation would attack a ship belonging to the most powerful nation on the planet, deliberately, and wouldn’t even remember to pack the right weapons. Your thoughtful and cogent analysis has convinced me that the non Conspiracy Theory is wrong and, in fact, our own government has been lying to us for years.
I just got to the bottom of the board and found your question. I presume it is a reply to me. The answer is that a torpedo did the most killing. Is that anti-ship enough for you? The crew received a unit citation for damage control. Otherwise, it would surely have sunk.
Your answer betrays ignorance about what actually transpired. The initial attack was conducted by airplanes armed with anti-infantry weaponry, not anti-ship weaponry. When the torpedo boats arrived, they held fired and initiated communication, fearing that misidentification had occurred and that the Liberty was not Egyptian. At that point one of the Liberty’s gunners opened fire on one of the torpedo boats, and their fire was returned.
You have yet to do the bare minimum in creating a logically coherent narrative into which you can place your claims.
Finnegan, I can’t parse this. Who are you replying to? It would help if you would reply directly to a post, so the thread map can put your reply with the post you are responding to.
Going down this road isn’t going to give you any traction and strictly speaking, it wasn’t friendly fire, it was a mistaken attack. To get the Israel being prepared to attack anyone’s ELINT ships nonsense out of the way, what other ELINT assets of which other nations did they go after? Regarding ship size and identification, there is a very long history of gross misidentification of ships by aircraft. During the battle of Coral Sea the US launched a full strike against the 11,000 ton light carrier Shoho’s task force which had been identified as the main body of IJN. The carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku which formed the actual main body of the IJN each displaced 30,000 tons. The Japanese didn’t fare any better on their first strike; they sent a full strike to attack the oiler Neosho and the destroyer Sims which were misidentified as a battleship and a carrier. The Sims displaced 2,000 tons, US battleships started at about 30,000 tons.
The easiest place that all the Israel-Liberty attack conspiracies fall apart fall apart is simply : why? Without putting on a tinfoil hat, why would Israel possibly deliberately attack the Liberty? What did it gain them?
Personally I’m unwilling to dock the Canadians points in this little exercise for choosing not to join the US in our little opportunistic adventure in Iraq. Particularly in consideration of the 158 Canadians who have lost their lives in Afghanistan thus far. Using fun charts and fractions,
See page 5 of the reference you supplied. The Inquiry passes along the Israeli position without endorsement. Other than internal matters, the only unequivocal statement is that the attack was unprovoked. This inquiry was in no position to get to the bottom of the matter, and did not do so.
By the way, it wouldn’t just be the US Navy which was wrong. There were multiple investigations, including one by the CIA. That they were all in on a coverup strains credulity. That there was only one investigation, and that it was just a ‘rubber stamp’, is fictional to the point that it destroys the credibility of the person claiming it.
Not to be rude, but you’re making a fairly controversial claim and insisting that several government agencies covered up a deliberate attack on a US Navy vessel and you’re relying on Wikipedia?