In this instance it sounds real good. Over the years I've seen a lot of explanations look real good. Over the years I've had to alter my determinations after a good many of them proved not to pan out. Again, in this instance I just don't know. I have had to satisfy myself for a long time that I would probably never be completely certain what took place. It is still fair game to air this issue out every once in a while.
There are many people who come to Free Republic. New people come all the time. I am not afraid of seeing articles like Oren's lofted here. I don't think the opinions of others should be hidden away either. Those new people should have access to this information. Most of them will come away thinking that it was a terrible incident in which both sides may have made mistakes and leave it at that. Others may have their suspicions about Israel confirmed. Still others may exhonerate Israel completely. Well, we've seen that postulated here. I have no problem with that view being presented.
Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) at the time of the Liberty incident, Paul C. Warnke, then Under Secretary of the Navy, then Secretary of State Dean Rusk, David G. Nes, who at the time served as deputy head of the American mission in Cairo, George Ball, then Under Secretary of State were not lightweights deprived of inside information. To a man they disagree with Oren. And we're not talking slight differences of opinion. They were pretty strident about it. The idea that now all of a sudden new information has been released which these men were not privy to, strikes me as more absurd than any claim made against Israel. These men were curious men. They didn't just fall off the turnip truck the day before they were appointed to office. They heard the investigations. They made their determinations. Unlike this writer, I simply cannot and will not dismiss their opinions out of hand explaining that they didn't have access to information. I don't buy that for a moment.
Oren provides a myriad of resources from bonified efforts that assess Israeli problems on this issue. Some think it was a botched security effort by Israel. Still others think it was intentional and premeditated. I'm sure mixed in were some documented mistakes by the US. That pretty much backs up the opinions of the above named individuals. But now Oren has the "real" truth. I'm sorry, but if Admiral Thomas H. Moorer and the other people mentioned had problems with Israeli explanations, so do I. I do not believe Oren has access to more information than they did. They knew the real players. They heard the inside stories. They reviewed or heard the personal accounts. He didn't. It's a trade-off at best.
Let's review part of this article here:
At 5:55 a.m. on June 8, Cmdr. Uri Meretz, a naval observer aboard an Israel Air Force (IAF) reconnaissance plane, noted what he believed to be an American supply vessel, designated GTR-5, seventy miles west of the Gaza coast. At Israeli naval headquarters in Haifa, staff officers fixed the location of the ship with a red marker, indicating "unidentified," on their control board. Research in Jane's Fighting Ships, however, established the vessel's identity as "the electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the United States, the Liberty." The marker was changed to green, for "neutral." Another sighting of the ship - "gray, bulky, with its bridge amidships" - was made by an Israeli fighter aircraft at 9:00 a.m., twenty miles north of El-Arish, on the Sinai coast, which had fallen to Israeli forces the day before.18 Neither of these reports made mention of the 5-by-8-foot American flag which, according to the ship's crewmen, was flying from the Liberty's starboard halyard.
The crew would also testify later that six IAF aircraft subsequently flew over the ship, giving them ample opportunity to identify its nationality. Israel Air Force reports, however, make no further mention of the Liberty.19 There may indeed have been additional Israeli overflights, but the IAF pilots were not looking for the Liberty. Their target was Egyptian submarines, which had been spotted off the coast. At 11:00 a.m., while the hunt for Egyptian submarines was on, the officer on duty at Israel's naval headquarters, Capt. Avraham Lunz, concluded his shift. In accordance with procedures, he removed the Liberty's green marker on the grounds that it was already five hours old and no longer accurate.20
Then, at 11:24, a terrific explosion rocked the shores of El-Arish. The blast was clearly heard by the men on the Liberty's bridge, who had been navigating according
to the town's tallest minaret, and who also noted a thick pall of smoke wafting toward them. In El-Arish itself, Israeli forces were convinced they were being
bombarded from the sea, and the IDF Southern Command reported sighting two unidentified vessels close offshore. Though the explosion probably resulted from an
ammunition dump fire, that fact was unknown at the time, and both Egyptian and Israeli sources had reported shelling of the area by Egyptian warships the previous
day. There was therefore good reason to conclude that the Egyptian navy had trained its guns on Sinai.21
Minutes after the explosion, the Liberty reached the eastern limit of its patrol and turned 238 degrees back in the direction of Port Said. Meanwhile, reports of a
naval bombardment on El-Arish continued to reach IDF General Staff Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Rabin took them seriously, concerned that the shelling was a
prelude to an amphibious landing that could outflank advancing Israeli troops. He reiterated the standing order to sink any unidentified ships in the war area, but also
advised caution: Soviet vessels were reportedly operating nearby. Since no fighter planes were available, the navy was asked to intercede, with the assumption that
air cover would be provided later. More than half an hour passed without any response from naval headquarters in Haifa. The General Staff finally issued a rebuke:
"The coast is being shelled and you - the navy - have done nothing."22 Capt. Izzy Rahav, who had replaced Lunz in the operations room, needed no more prodding.
He dispatched three torpedo boats of the 914th squadron, code-named "Pagoda," to find the enemy vessel responsible for the bombardment and destroy it. The
time was 12:05 p.m.
At 1:41 p.m., Ensign Aharon Yifrah, combat information officer aboard the flagship of these torpedo boats, T-204, informed its captain, Cmdr. Moshe Oren,23 that an unidentified ship had been sighted northeast of El-Arish at a range of 22 miles. The ship was sailing toward Egypt at a speed, Yifrah estimated, of 30 knots.
Yifrah's assessment, twice recalculated and confirmed by him, was pivotal. It meant that the ship could not be the Liberty, whose maximum speed was 18 knots.
Moreover, the Israelis had standing orders to fire on any unknown vessel in the area sailing at over 20 knots, a speed which, at that time, could only be attained by
fighting ships. This information, when added to the ship's direction, indicated that the target was an enemy destroyer fleeing toward port after having shelled El-Arish.
Okay, let's recap. By Israeli accounts, at 9:00 a.m. the Liberty is spoted for the second time. It is twenty miles northeast of El-Arish. At 11:00 a.m. the Liberty's designation as neutral is removed under the cover of it having been five hours since it was identified. It wasn't five hours. It was two. Note very carefully it's location. At 11:24 a.m. a terrific explosioin rocks El-Arish. At 1:41 p.m., two hours and seventeen minutes later, the ship is spotted by Ensign Aharon Yifrah. Where is it? Why it's 22 miles northeast of El-Arish. Since the 9:00 a.m. sighting, the ship has moved approximately two miles in four hours and forty-one minutes. Even if Israeli command didn't know the identity of the ship, at 1:41 p.m. the ship couldn't have moved more than ten miles from El-Arish since the 11:24 a.m. (supposed) attack. Anotherwords, the Liberty couldn't have been moving at 30 knots, or it would have been at least 80 knots away from the scene of it's attack.
I don't think there's a military person alive who would assess that a ship two and one half hours after an attack, would still be within ten miles of the attack, as being the likely culprit just hanging around for aircraft to blow it out of the water.
The Liberty was in the area since 9:00 a.m. It was within two miles of it's last sighting some four hours and forty-one minutes later. Still, Israel had no idea what the identity might be.
We could go round and round about this. My choices are to back the men on the Liberty or the Israeli accounting. The men on the Liberty state very emphaticly that they saw a number of Israeli aircraft go over. We know that at least two of those aircraft identified the Liberty. Subsequent aircraft supposedly couldn't, but from 3000 feet, they could identify a 50mm deck gun. This doesn't sound credible to me. Knowing the Liberty was in the area, I cannot imagine any military command not documenting it's presence and following it on radar. With Russian ships in the area, I cannot imagine any military force attacking an unknown ship realizing it might bring the full weight of the Russian navy down on them, perhaps even sparking a global conflict between two uneasy superpowers.
Oren thinks it's a long stretch for anyone to think that Israel might have done something like this in it's own personal interest, whatever that personal interest might be. On the otherhand he wants us to believe that at least six reported sightings by ship staff, as well as two Israeli documented identifications of the Liberty were not only enough to identify it but grounds to avoid attacking it as well. Frankly, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking either of the suppositions were pure fantasy, those that adopted them a bunch of fruitcakes.
I find it very hard to buy off on the innocense of Israel on this issue. I have no reason to disbelieve the crew of the Liberty. Further, I am dumbfounded by Israel's admitted knowledge of the Liberty, it's claimed loss of it, it's willingness to attack an unidentified ship knowing Russian vessels were in the area, and that this ship was two miles off it's last known position, was still in the area some 2.25 hours later even though it was supposedly moving at 30 knots. None of this adds up to me.
I have not let my thoughts on this incident cloud my judgement regarding Israel. I assess it's actions in today's envirionment separtely from this incident. I will not countenance anti-Semitism. I support Isreal's existance. Those who frequent this forum know that there isn't a reasoned person around who defends them more than I do. I cannot buy off on Oren's thoughts on this. To me, as certainly as uncertainty regarding this incident don't add up to him, his thoughts on this incident don't add up to me.
The crew of the USS Liberty was savagely attacked without cause. I can find no reason to doubt them. I can find no compelling reason to think that I should to out of my way to exhonerate Israel, to the deference of our 34 dead, 171 wounded. I still find it hard to believe Israel could have lost the ship.
One thing about this article stood out to me. I'll recount it here.
All of these elements combined to create a tragic "friendly fire" incident of the kind that claimed the lives of at least fifty Israeli soldiers in the Six Day War, and caused 5,373 American casualties in Vietnam in 1967 alone.53 Obviously, these findings can do little to lessen the suffering of those American servicemen who were wounded in the incident, nor can they be expected to offer comfort to the families of the dead. But they should at least permit us to bring to a close what has for a generation remained one of the most painful chapters in the history of America's relationship with the State of Israel.
For me at least, it doesn't matter what happened in other years, in other wars, in other nations. This incident stands on it's own. The suggestion that we should bring this chapter to a close is disturbing to me. The comparison of 34 dead and 171 injured in one major incident, to other incidents where onesies twosies (which do add up to a lot over time) were lost due to friendly fire, is insulting to say the least. Despite this person's best efforts, this chapter is not closed for me. With reasonable questions still remaining unanswered, it's the highth of impudence to even suggest it.
That's how I see it. And that's why I maintain that this issue bears looking at from time to time. It is a part of our history. Good men died on that day. They were our men. I won't forget. I won't countenance the idea that the terms of their deaths be deemed outside the bounds of reasoned discussion once in a while.
If anyone doesn't like conversing on this issue once in a while, they should take a pass on these threads. Conversely, if someone seeks to state that Israel is a pariah state based on this incident, I'd ask them to take a pass on these threads as well.