The Navy launched planes as soon as they got the Liberty's distress call, but Israel had halted the attack and admitted to being responsible before they arrived. Someone posted a link to a website about the Liberty that gave the impression that Johnson called the planes back while the attack was still going on, basically deciding to stand by while the Liberty was attacked. This is not what happened. The attack was already over by the time the planes were called back. I suppose the planes could have struck Israeli targets in retaliation, but would that have really improved the situation for anyone? No offense, but a lot of people here seem to be very naive. International politics are about expediency, not morality or quests for 'justice'. The US ignoring the Liberty incident is perhaps the millionth example of this that history has provided.
Spyke touched on one possible approach - cutting off foreign aid to Israel. I would also imagine that an unprovoked attack against an American ship in international waters would be considered an act of war...
check out this old thread, I think we still need the US to do something about this, we shouldn't appease our so-called friends, that kill us without remorse or afterthought http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=8991
LOL Well wouldn't that be the end of the world? BTW I didn't know that the US/Isreal had Syria to 'hand over' in the first place. I would have thought that any decision to 'go Soviet' would have been a Syrian one. Err I thought that the nature of unprincipled political expediency was the topic of this thread. What happens if it ever becomes politically expedient to fuck you over Nasor? Should we support you or just shrug our shoulders and forget you existed? Expediency sucks. Principles rule! Dee Cee
My point is that Johnson's actions regarding the Liberty are typical of US foreign policy decisions. If anyone is surprised by this sort of thing, it means they probably haven't spent much time studying international politics. The Liberty incident is really pretty far down on the 'moral outrage' scale compared to many of the other things that governments have done recently in the name of expediency.
I thought I heard that retired Adm. Moorer had recently passed away so the issue of the sinking of Liberty will no longer have his testimony.
Do you mean? http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg110421.html or? http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/pers-us/uspers-m/w-mcgngl.htm or the commander from the "USS Pueblo", boarded by the N. Koreans? http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Bunker/9062/
Thought I heard on Newshour that retired Adm. Thomas Moorer passed away last week. He was in his nineties.
Nasor's longer post was excellent, except that for the IAF to blind American sigint, they would have needed to also attack many other listening posts, even those as far away as Rota and Sinop. Somebody was very concerned about information from a VHF and/or visual source that only Liberty was in position to monitor.
While I am disgusted by what the Israeli's did to this ship and her crew, I am equally disgusted by how little the Six Fleet did to protect this ship. Those Israeli PT boats should have been blown out of the water, and any Israeli aircraft, like the helos, should have been shot down as the Sixth Fleet rescue craft and combat support aircraft converged on the scene of the crime. Unfortunately the U.S. leadership at the time lacked the stones to do the right thing, for fear of upsetting the Ruskies. Syria's fate be damned, we could have defended our own ship, and chose not to. That's the most aggravating part of this whole incident. The poor ship was under attack for almost two hours and no one came to help them.
Very beautiful and touching site about the USS Liberty: http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/ The Attack by Israel on USS liberty was a terrorist attack that went unpunished, no wonder, it is Israel and the zionists who run America. ''Every time we do something, you [Shimon Peres] tell me America will do this and will do that... I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” — Ariel Sharon Israeli Prime Minister, homicidal psychopath Jewish Mafia member Knesset, Tel Aviv, October 3, 2001
Here is something from an old post about the attack on the USS Liberty: 2 hour attack off Egypt's coast, 34 killed, 171 wounded, 821 rocket & machine gun holes, 40 ft hole from a torpedo boat, high performance jets, naplam from slower jets, buzzed by photo-reconaissence planes 13 times. 1) 6-7-67 Israeli troops staged by Lake Tiberias for Syrian assault @ 6-8-67 1130 hrs 2) 6-8-67 0600 hours, 170 milesfrom site, is reconned boxcar 3) 6-8-67 0900 hrs, 160 from site reconned by jet 4) 6-8-67 1000 hrs, reconned by 2 jets, reports American flag 5) 6-8-67 Israel delays Syrian assault 24 hours 6) 6-8-67 1030 hrs, reconned by boxcar 7) 6-8-67 1100 hrs, reconned by boxcar 8) 6-8-67 1130 hrs, reconned by boxcar 9) 6-8-67 1200 hrs, 3 torpedo boads race for the Liberty from Ashdod 10) 6-8-67 1215 hrs, reconned by boxcar 11) 6-8-67 1245, rec by boxcar 12) 6-8-67 1400, attack starts 13) 6-8-67 1409 , USS Saratoga acknolwedges cry for help from attack 14) 6-8-67 1435 torpedo explosion kills 25 15) 6-8-67 torpedo boats circle, shoot at firefighters 16) 6-8-67 1515, torpedo boats fire on life rafts, then leave 17) 6-8-671632 torpedo boats return, offer assistance 18) 6-9-67 1130 hrs, Israel invades Syria "Assault on the Liberty", the true story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship' by James M. Ennes, Jr. 1979 RandomHouse, NewYork good info on a boxcar http://www.bermuda-triangle.org/Investigations/C-119_Flying_Boxcar/c-119_flying_boxcar.html
You people are making this more complicated than it really is. The fact is that US forein aid to Israel before the six day war was made of very small loans, starting in the late 1950s. None of these loans were military. The huge chunks of cash you refer to did not come untill AFTER the Six Day War, when the aid was kick-started with Operation Nickel Grass - an airlift of fuel and ammunition to Israel on account of the Yom Kippur War, second only to the Berlin airlift in size. Before '67 Israel had bought many American missiles, they BOUGHT them with their own money, they were not given them. Cutting off forein aid at a time when it did not exist is ridiculous. US aid to South Korea is almost twice as much, if not more so than aid to Israel since '73. US aid to Israel, from 1973 to the present, is around $73 to $74 billion. Eisenhower made a threat to bomb Tel-aviv in 1956 to stop the Sinai Campaign, which was an Israeli effort to stop, or at least hinder border raids from that region, then an all too common occurence. The Liberty was a ship in a war zone because it was within range of radio traffic, it belonged to a nation that Israel did not yet trust, and it was proven to have been spying. Yes, Israel knew it was American, but being American does not give you a free pass to intrude upon a war zone. 24 hours before the attack Israel told the US to get their ship out of those waters, the US meant to, but a scheduling error doomed Liberty's crew. Saying that Liberty was just looking to see if the Russians were going to enter the war is ridiculous, Mossad had that covered. Shortly before '67 Israeli intelligence had also captured a MiG-21 from the Iraqi Air Force and given it to the US, so both countries owed eachother, it wasn't a lopsided alliance. It was better to knock out Syria's military while they could than wait for them to be a serious threat, as Syria had made it clear many times that they very much wished to see Israel destroyed and wished to participate in any action to do so if and when they could. War is not supposed to be a fair fight. It's a shame the crew of the Liberty is not angry at their own commanders for leaving them there and not notifying them of what the Israelis told them to do. But of course, they chose the world's most popular scapegoat: the JEWS
Seems to be an urban legend that exists only on the Internet. No record from any credible media source that that quote was ever made. First appeared in a release by the Islamic Association for Palestine, a pro-Hamas organization, but there is no record of the Israeli news source that the IAP reported it coming from ever releasing such a statement.
in International waters? what wardog barbarians our right, in international waters owe? please, if it wasn't for the US, you'd be awash in the Med, which is why most fanatic muslims hate us, for supporting Israel so blindly blaming the victim, are we? what? the oldest trick in the book, "whoa is me, I'm jewish, nobody loves me". stop crying, if the US was such an ally, why didn't the Israelis trust them? And if the US wasn't such an ally, why didn't they sever all ties & declare Israel an "enemy combatant"?, which I would have, I want an official apology from both the Israelis (for doing it) & the US (for not doing anything about it)
Yes, everyone has the God-given right to spy wherever they want, and on whomever they please, but not the international right. Since the first paleolithic societies ran into conflict with eachother, it has been an understanding amongst spies that if a spy is ever caught by another side, enemy, neutral, or even ally, he will most likely be killed. What I said above works with this statement of yours as well. We'd be awash in the Med ey? Prove it. No more than you blame those who survived the holocaust for the creation of a "fascist" state. Randolfo, so far you have not refuted a single thing i said, if you want to have a reasonable debate here, put some facts on the table instead of spewing raw emotions. And as for Jews "whining", i should say the same about you with the USS liberty. Now, let me try something new here. Let's say that since the end of WWII Mexico and Canada had longed for the destruction of the US. Let's say the US endured two short, furious wars in this time, the first with both Mexico and Canada, the second only a quick campaign in Northern Mexico to help slow terrorist activities there. Since before both wars the US had not been in control of territory it claimed as it's own. US farmers to the north had experienced shelling from artillery based in Southern Canada, from one of the areas they claimed as their own. Southerners had also experienced a lot of terrorism stemming from the Mexican border. So, in 1967 the US took preemptive action and destroyed over 90% of the Mexican Air Force, launching a major war. At the end of this war American forces took control over all territories that they had made claims over in the past, and some more land in addition. Near the beginning of the war however an Israeli ship, an old rusty German cargo carrier from WWII, converted by Mossad for intelligence duty, laid off the east coast of the US. In international waters. Listening to radio chatter. The US saw the ship and gave Israel 24 hours to withdraw from the warzone, or see their ship destroyed. Through a scheduling error Israel failed to comply, and the attack begun. Fighters machine gunned lifeboats, torpedoe boats came and blew holes in the ship, etc., etc. And from that time to the present, there has been a huge outcry for an investigation, and anger about a coverup. Now switch it around, and this time, look at a globe, at the East Mediteranean, look at the size of Israel...
Non-combantant ships have the right of free passage in international waters. This has been the recognized standard for hundreds of years in the Western world. Israel had no right to fire on Liberty. It was a war crime. It was a crime against humanity to fire on the lifeboats even if they had been Egyptian.
