Here’s a link to the Navy Times summary of the U.S.S. Liberty issue.

Israel has always insisted the attack was a case of mistaken identity, and 11 U.S. investigations over the years have reached the same conclusion.

The above referenced article presents both sides of the argument.

A U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry completed 10 days after the attack concluded it was a case of mistaken identity. Ten subsequent inquiries by Congress, the CIA and the Pentagon found no evidence pointing to a deliberate attack.

Notably, it points out that the USS Liberty was 14 miles off shore on the day of the attack, in a zone that the Egyptians had declared closed to neutral traffic. According to a State Department summary, the Liberty had been sent to the area by the National Security Agency to find out whether Soviet personnel were operating with Egyptian forces. Messages sent to the Liberty instructing it to remain 100 miles offshore were never received.

Since we all love a good conspiracy, let’s just assume that the Israeli intelligence had intercepted the instructions to the USS Liberty to remain 100 miles offshore, and then encountered a ship 14 miles offshore, viz, 86 miles away from where the Liberty was supposed to be, in a zone closed to neutral traffic. Is it impossible to believe that they would conclude that it was a different ship?

It is, to say the least, ironic, that everyone at FDL is tolerant of “false flag” theories regarding the World Trade Center, but if Israel makes a mistake – a justified mistake, as we have seen – about a false flag theory, they are accused of the most heinous and stupid war crimes. Note: I am not accepting that the Israelis attacked the ship on the theory that it was flying a false flag.

The idea that the Israelis would intentionally shoot at an American ship is bizarre. Ed Teller says “I doubt we will ever know the why.” Of course, the “why” is the difference between a tragic, though understandable, mistake committed in the fog of war, vs. a grievous crime, for which Israel’s only ally would have been right to sever all relations.

Not only do we not know the “why,” but no plausible hypothesis has ever been suggested. If you want speculation, here’s a bit for you: if anything the U.S. spy ship was supplying intelligence to the Israelis. Sound reasonable to you? It does to me. But for Israel to shoot the source of its intelligence for no apparent reason, well, not so much reasonable.

A key part of the “Israel intentionally shot up an American ship and the government kept it all hidden in spite of a dozen investigations that unanimously agree there was no evidence to support the allegation” conspiracy theory is that all of the evidence has been destroyed. But it is not so. The Navy Times article referenced at the start of this comment mentions a website that contains the actual transcripts of NSA captured transmissions by the Israeli Air Force. Clearly, the pilots thought the Liberty was an Egyptian ship.

They are difficult to read, being pdfs of 40 year old Xerox copies. You can check them out for yourself here.

For a minute by minute complete recounting of what occurred, the interested reader is referred to this web site. It is necessarily long and slow reading, and only recommended to people who have an interest in being fair about this.

ET makes an especially vile claim which is rebutted in the website, to wit:

Among the more far-fetched theories that have been suggested is the possibility that the Liberty was attacked because it had learned of the Israeli execution of Egyptian POWs; or that it had picked up Israeli attempts to draw Jordan into the war so that Jerusalem might be brought under Israeli control.43 But no document, American or Israeli, contains any reference to prisoner executions; neither are they mentioned in any Arabic source that has come to light to date.

[fn: Though Arab archives remain closed, the Six Day (or June) War has yielded numerous memoirs by the civilian and military leaders of Egypt and Jordan. Examples can be found in Mahmud Riad, Mahmud Riad’s Memoirs (Beirut: Al-Muasasah al-’Arabiyya Lil’Dirasat al-Nashr, 1987), vol. 2 [Arabic]; Muhammad Hassanayn Heikal, 1967: The Explosion (Cairo: Markaz al-Ahram, 1990) [Arabic]; Abdel-Latif Al-Baghdadi, Memoirs (Cairo: al-Maktab al-Misri al-Hadith, 1977) [Arabic]; Abdel Muhsin Kamil Murtagi, Major-General Murtagi Attests to the Truth (Cairo: Dar al-Watan al-Arabi, 1976). [Arabic] end footnote]

ET has previously posted stuff in defense of Patrick Buchanan who was called an anti-Semite by someone you would naturally expect to defend his fellow conservative, namely, William F. Buckley. Well, that is within the grounds of legitimate debate. However, the stuff he posted was intended to show that Jewish Americans are less patriotic than others as evidenced by our lower representation in the military. To say he didn’t understand this is to insult his intelligence.

The other night, I got drunk and went onto a thread that had been quiet for two hours. On it I said, “I outlasted the fucking anti-Semites.” Drunkeness has a well documented capability of interfering with someone’s ability to judge his own funniness. Be that as it may, I have been effectively barred from political debate on the Lake.

It is okay to call Israel and her supporters Nazis. It is okay to call anyone who agrees with some small part of the Republican agenda a rascist. It is just fine to use expressions like “Israel-uber-alles” and heaven protect anyone who would dare to draw attention to some of Reverend Tutu’s most controversial statements. (Of course, it is just fine to attack religion in general, using the most condescending, inaccurate, and disdainful tones, but Desmond Tutu, is revered as a saint, in no small part because he is an Archbishop.)

All I want to know is when is it okay to call a spade a fucking shovel.

http://www.myspace.com/pistolpistolmusic

scroll down the page to play the video

This IS a well established pattern when some group has an agenda to stir up support for their cause.

The Italian SISMI infiltrated the Red Bragades in the 60s and were the people who actually blew up the Bologna train station which fueled the clamor to stomp out the radical left in Italy.

The sinking of The Maine was a false flag op, as was the Gulf of Tonkin incident which led to the resolution and hundreds of thousands of troops in Nam and bombing etc.

There may be no smoking gun or hard evidence about the events of 9.11, but it appears to be yet another false flag operation.

PNAC has even stated in their literature that a “Pearl Harbor” like event was needed to get the US public behind the “long war” or the GWOT. Whether it was false flag or not… it certainly worked and enabled the USA to get support of the people to ILLEGALLY attack Afghanistan and then Iraq. You will recall all the flag pins, yellow ribbons, flags and bumper stickers. Americans were fired up and wanted “revenge.”

The trouble is that no proof has been established as to what actually happened, and who was behind it. The boogie man Osama was trotted out and the PR campaign was relentless. All reason went out the doors from every level of our society, the media, the pundits and only a few people said… hey we need a real investigation. They were branded nut case conspiratorial tin foil hat wearers.

The truth movement, for those who have managed to weed through it has revealed that the conventional conspiracy theory of 19 Arabs with box cutters did not cause the events of 9.11. The suppposed “facts” simply don’t support that.

Six of the 19 identified as the hijackers are alive today. And not one arab was on the flight manifests.

There is a lot of psychic numbing at work and people just don’t want to believe it. The thought that such a incredible horrible thing was done and … who could be behind this???

We need to learn the truth… sooner than later. I suspect that W and his buds know something are not letting on. I don’t presume to know what they know.

I do know that they have an established history of lying… about everything.

I have read and will reread the links given to us from Ed*ard Teller. His knowledge about the attack on the USS Liberty by Israel and the links to Ray McGovern are educational.

It is emphasized that Israels attack on the USS Liberty is a war crime.

Coupled with the the revelations of a war crime enacted against US citizens by Israelis is Ray McGovern’s critique of a book by John Mearsheimer and John Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

What concerns me is the way in which this information is presented.

Ed*ard Teller says that Ray McGovern begins by dismissing the work of Mearsheimer and Walt but moves on to “having asked questions of people in the audience. A man stands up:”

The account of the attack by Israel on the USS Liberty is told to a shocked room.

This is what Ray McGovern says about his opinions of the work by Mearsheimer and Walt:

I had read that piece carefully and found it an unusual act of courage as well as scholarship. That’s what I told the questioner, adding that I did have two problems with the study:

First, it seemed to me the authors erred in attributing virtually all the motivation for the U.S. attack on Iraq to the Israel Lobby and the so-called “neoconservatives” running our policy and armed forces. Was Israel an important factor? Indeed. But of equal importance, in my view, was the oil factor and what the Pentagon now calls the “enduring” military bases in Iraq, which the White House and Pentagon decided were needed for the U.S. to dominate that part of the Middle East.

Second, I was intrigued by the fact that Mearsheimer and Walt made no mention of what I believe to be, if not the most telling, then perhaps the most sensational proof of the power the Lobby knows it can exert over our government and Congress. In sum, in June 1967, after deliberately using fighter-bombers and torpedo boats to attack the USS Liberty for over two hours in an attempt to sink it and kill its entire crew, and then getting the U.S. government, the Navy, and the Congress to cover up what happened, the Israeli government learned that it could – literally – get away with murder.

I found myself looking out at 400 blank stares. The USS Liberty? And so I asked how many in the audience had heard of the attack on the Liberty on June 8, 1967. Three hands went up; I called on the gentleman nearest me.

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The information in this article speaks of war crimes against the United States by Israel and discusses the power of the Israeli Lobby in influencing the United States.

Ray McGovern did not dismiss the work of Mearsheim and Walt. He challenges their assertion that the War in Iraq was motivated entirely by the Israeli lobby.

Ray McGovern states that his views are that the war is not attributable to the Israeli lobby only but to the neoconservatives in the US government. Equally important is the US government’s quest for oil and enduring military bases.

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The material presented here was meant to be provocative and incendiary. It is extremely important.

Edward T*ller appears to have a wealth of information on the subject of Israel and the Israeli lobby.

I will be reading his and other’s remarks carefully. To leave out Ray McGovern’s remarks that Mearsheim and Walt seemed to be attributing ALL the motivation for the attack on Iraq to the Iraeli lobby, and that Ray McGovern does not agree with that assertion, is significant.

cinnamonape @ 159

thanks for all that analysis, wow!

wow indeed!

thanks for all that analysis, wow!

Sunday Talking Head Thread

Hey egregious…nice to see you in this late owl slot.

You can check Sky & Telescope’s sight for an interactive sky chart, will tell you what that celestial object is. You can also check their article, This Week’s Sky at a Glance.

SunnyNobility @ 138

Eg @ 136

Anybody know what that bright thing is next to the moon, is it Venus? The man in the moon putting on his tinfoil?
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My vote’s for tinfoil.

It’s actually the conjunction of the planets Venus and Saturn, along with the bright star, Regulus. Makes for a really bright “object”.