NationStates Jolt Archive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, USS Liberty, in international waters about 12.5 nautical miles from the coast of the Sinai Peninsula, north of El Arish, by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967. It occurred during the Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The attack killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded at least 171.

nasty nasty nasty...

So it has been 40 years now(1 year since that post), and no congressional investigation? When will justice be done?


a 1 hour video on the matter: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7267134620652018859

[Pre-emptive Bushevik/Kahanist Rebuttal]

You're an Anti-Semitic Liberal Islamofascist who hates freedom.

[/Pre-emptive Bushevik/Kahanist Rebuttal]

There won't be any justice as long as the United States Government has kosher dill up its ass courtesy of groups like AIPAC. If it had been some other country, even ones allied to the U.S. at the time you can be certain there would have been justice 40 years ago.

When the US's allies hit US ships, the standard procedure is to go "Never mind, here, have some weapons!"

The Iraqis did it (although it really was an accident then) and they got weapons. The Israelis did it (deliberately) and got weapons and money and stuff.

It seems to me that the RN should think about sinking the Sixth Fleet or something. Maybe then the Armed Forces could get weapons that work... hmm...

There were multiple inquiries into what happened (three by Israel and ten by America) and no intentional wrong doing was found to have happened. Israel admitted to making three major mistakes (accidentally unmarking the ship as American, thinking the ship as an Egyptian and not being informed of a scout aircraft saying it was marked in Greek lettering rather than Arabic). Israel eventually paid 13 million dollars in compensation to the US and the families of victims. There's more mentioned in the snippet of article I posted below.

The reason people are automatically accused of anti-semitism when they bring this up is because anti-semites love the story and bring it up quite frequently from what I've seen (Randomly surfing Stormfront). I know you guys aren't but that's the reasoning behind the accusation.


The Israeli and American governments conducted multiple inquiries into the incident, and issued reports concluding that the attack was the result of a mistake, caused by confusion among the Israeli attackers about the precise identity of the USS Liberty. These conclusions have been challenged, most notably by an organization of Liberty survivors as well as by some key former high-ranking U.S. officials who were in office at the time. These skeptics have included Secretary of State Dean Rusk, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the NSA, and the senior legal counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry into the incident. While the matter is officially closed for purposes of Israeli-American relations, it remains controversial in public discussion.

Israel's official position is that the attack was not the result of an intentional targeting of an American ship. Israeli officials say they were assured by the United States that no U.S. ships were in the area, and that its air and naval forces mistakenly identified Liberty as the Egyptian vessel El Quseir. Supporters of this position say Israel had no motive for a surprise attack on an important ally. They also note that the tense atmosphere of the Six-Day War created the possibility of such mistakes, and point out that the U.S. government, concerned about such dangers, ordered the Liberty further away from shore (although communications failures kept the order from arriving in time).[1] Finally, they note that the United States has several times mistakenly attacked its own and allied forces in so-called friendly fire incidents.

Others claim that the attack was deliberate and premeditated. They note that the Liberty was more than twice as large as the El Quseir, and was clearly designated with Latin rather than Arabic letters and numbers. Proponents include surviving Liberty crewmen,[1] and some former U.S. government officials, including then-CIA director Richard Helms and then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk as well as Admiral Thomas Hinman Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

On December 17, 1987, the issue was officially closed by the two governments through an exchange of diplomatic notes. Israel also eventually paid nearly $13 million in humanitarian reparations to the United States and in compensation to the families of the victims. [2]

From Wikipedia.

Most of the investigations were done in 1967, and that is within the time period that most of the crew were bound by standing orders from the rear admiral not to discuss the incident. So I doubt there is much merit to those reports. A formal congressional investigation has been demanded by the highly decorated crew
(some of their citations for medals earned on that day were falsified to indicate medals were received for combat in Vietnam, when they had never been there) of the Liberty. I think they deserve that.

I believe that the Johnson administration had foreknowledge of this operation or was told just as it was starting, and that the goal was to either: to sink the ship and blame it on Egypt, bringing the US into the war, or at least providing a good excuses for militarily aiding Israel; or to sink the ship to cover up whatever the ship's spying equipment recorded, because Israel did something wrong, like execute Egyptian POWs (they actually achieved the destruction of most of the spying equipment during the attack, and killed most of the operators)
I don't believe they mistook the much larger, and uniquely shaped USS Liberty, which had radio antenna sticking out in all directions, was mistaken for an Egyptian freighter. Even if they did, I don't believe the Israelis would go after a Freighter after they had reports of shelling, which would indicate an armed warship. They had the USS Liberty marked on a chart. They knew were it was, they had been conducting low-level recon flights over it.

If this was really just a mistake.

Agh, I had a lengthy reply but was logged out so now I'll try and wrote a summation of it...

Most of them were done int the 60s but at least one was done in 1981 and still found Israel had attacked by accident.

The Six day war was pretty much done as soon as Israel destroy all opposing nations Air Forces. That's why theres about 700 Israeli deaths compared to some 21,000 Arab. And by the time America could get there in any substantial numbers the war would be done, even if the war had lasted twice as long.

The other point you made about a cover up. Well, that seems excessive. Israel could have simply asked the US to cover up any documents. Israel and America have been so buddy buddy since Israel's inception that I'm sure there'd be no problem. Plus were anyone to come out later making these accusations it's not hard to simply smear them out of existence. Finally, Israel has done some very messed up things in it's near 60 years of being and they would have had to commit a crime so terrible that the US and West would turn on them for them to take such extreme measures. And yet this terrible crime has never been reported by anyone else, at least to my knowledge.

I'm simply have yet to see any substantiated evidence to counter the accepted accounts of both the US and Israel. I do not assume conspiracy theories are wrong without some investigation, and I do think a Congressional Investigation should have been held but usually the most simple explanation is the best.

It's sad that the men who died aboard that ship never saw any justice. A congressional inquiry would be nice, but there also needs to be a formal inquiry by the Israeli government. They have nothing left to loose, for the incident was forty years ago.

Accidentally attacked a Naval ship with planes and torpedo boats?!? That's ridiculous, no military, however incompetent, could ever make such a mistake, I didn't even know about this.

Accidentally attacked a Naval ship with planes and torpedo boats?!? That's ridiculous, no military, however incompetent, could ever make such a mistake, I didn't even know about this.

That's because our government did a good job downplaying the incident at the time. There was another similar military snafu the Johnson Administration covered up, too, and I believe the same year. That's when the North Koreans stormed one of our warships and held everyone hostage. That was downplayed, too. So were all the causes for the Vietnam war.

That's because our government did a good job downplaying the incident at the time. There was another similar military snafu the Johnson Administration covered up, too, and I believe the same year. That's when the North Koreans stormed one of our warships and held everyone hostage. That was downplayed, too. So were all the causes for the Vietnam war.

Well the Tonkin gulf incident was a load of crap essentially.