[Old Sarge]

Will the Left yell for reparations?

(sounds of crickets)

[Inyokern]

James Bamford, an investigative journalist

James Bamford, a certified idiot.

Bamford was a close friend of Robert Hanssen and claims that he never had any inkling that Hanssen might be a spy.

[Thumper1960]

"Negligent" my a$$!

[nkycincinnatikid]

In a further finding by the state department, had the Pacific Fleet been at Myrtle Beach instead of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 a tragic misunderstanding might have been prevented. Specific American regrets to the Chrysanthemum Throne are not however anticipated at this time.

[Benjo]

The first sentence of this story by AP reporter Barry Schweid says that the state department "concluded" after its conference on Monday that the Liberty attack was due to "Israeli negligence."

The third sentence of his story says the conference "failed to produce a consensus for any of three views voiced most often: Israel intentionally attacked what it knew to be a ship of the U.S. Navy, the attack was accidental, or the attack resulted from faulty judgment."

So which was it? It sounds from this story that the State Department didn't conclude anything. An earlier version of this same story called the facts "elusive" and said the particpants argued "heatedly".

Despite what Schweib says in his lead, the rest of the story seems to suggest that the conference didn't reach any conclusions at all. Schweib ought to reread his stories for internal consistancy before sending them off around the world. (To be fair to Schweib, a ham-handed editor--or one with an agenda--may have rewritten his lead after Schweib filed his story, turned off his cell phone and went out for beer.)