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Last week, on the eve of the anniversary, came a new offering: "The Attack on the Liberty" by South Carolina investigative reporter James Scott, whose father, John Scott, was also a survivor of the attack and a friend of Ennes'.

One day we will learn the truth about the attack on the Liberty and hopefully that day will be soon.

What the hell were they thinking?

There is no new focus on the Liberty.
Its just the fallback justification for racist hatred.

The US military said on many occasions it was friendly fire.
Deal with it.

Navy spy ship, USS Liberty, guess not in friendly waters

Let me channel the anti-semites on this forum:

This, of course, is yet another reason why Uncle Sam should allow Iran to have nukes. To avenge the deliberate Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.

Did I do a good job?

Oh, geez...

What the heck difference could it possibly make? What about that incident is relevant to the situation as it sits today?

And those were the years when the US was NOT much of a backer of Israel. They had a hands off policy because they did not want to offend the Russians. We (under the Johnson administration) had done some things that could have easily made Israel believe that our ships were a threat at a time of war. While I grieve for all of our fine younf men lost, I am not sure given the position that Israel was in, if I were in charge I might just have made the same call

bump

The press is following the marching orders of American King Hussein.
Hate Israel, kowtow to the Islamist Despots.
Israel has not done anything against America in 42 years, so they must pore through the history books to find something... BINGO!

The Saudis have killed a lot more Americans on American soil - yet King Hussein flies there for his first official State visit to kiss the backside of their Theocratic Islamist Dictator.

Well, we just discussed this yesterday on another thread, so I won’t repeat what I said there.

I’ll just ask a question: Why is the Seattle Times, a left wing rag, running this story? Because they care about our military, or because they want to stir up hatred for Israel at a time when Obama is planning to abandon them because he is a Muslim lover.

To do that, they need to stir up more antisemitism first.

The USS Stark was hit by two missiles 22 years ago last month. Did you write an article about that anniversary? During the 1992 campaign Al Gore left no doubt that he believed it was intentionally attacked by Iraqi aircraft.

This story has been ignored for 40+ years, but now that Obama has a need to demonize Israel it will get some traction in the State Run Media.

Seattle Times? Lib paper. Did Rahm Emanuel himself ask them to write about this, in order to renew antagonisms against Israel—the new Serbia?

Well, this seemed like a good place to post the Presidential Crises list... :-)

Presidential Crises - Hostages and/or Killings of Military and Civilians

—
Truman — Killed (31), Berlin Blockade, USSR Military, East Germany
Eisenhower — Hostages (1), Gary Powers U2 Incident, USSR Military, USSR
Kennedy — Hostages (Berlin), Berlin Crisis of 1961, USSR Military, East Germany
Kennedy — Killed (118), Bay of Pigs Invasion, US Military, Cuba
Kennedy — Killed (0), Cuban Missile Crisis, US/USSR,
Johnson — Killed (34), USS Liberty, Israel
Johnson — Hostages (82/1 Killed), USS Pueblo, 11 months, North Korea
Johnson — Killed (0), Gulf of Tonkin Incident, N. Vietnamese Torpedo Boats, North Vietnam
Nixon — Killed (2), US Diplomats, Black September/Arafat, Sudan
Ford — Hostages (40/21 servicemen killed), SS Mayaguez, Khmer Rouge, Cambodia
Ford — Killed (2), Axe Murder Incident (two US Army Soldiers), NK Army, North Korea
Carter — Hostages (52), Tehran Embassy Hostages, 444 days, Iran
Carter — Killed (8), Operation Eagle Claw, C-130, Iran
Reagan — Killed (0/0 foreign; jets shot down), 1981 Gulf of Sidra Incident, US Air Force, Libya
Reagan — Killed (62), KAL Flight 007 Shootdown, USSR Air Force, USSR
Reagan — Killed (19), Operation Urgent Fury, US Military, Grenada
Reagan — Killed (241), Marine barracks bombing, Islamic Terrorists, Lebanon/Iran
Reagan — Hostages (20), Civilian Hostages, Islamic Terrorists, Lebanon/Iran
Reagan — Killed (5), Civilian/Military Killings, Islamic Terrorists, Lebanon/Iran
Reagan — Killed (1), Army Maj. Arthur D. Nicholson Incident, Soviet Military, East Germany
Reagan — Killed (6), Zona Rosa Attack, Central America Revolutionary Workers’ Party, El Salvador
Reagan — Killed (3), Berlin Discotheque Bombing, Libyan Intelligence/Gaddafi, West Germany
Reagan — Killed (0/unknown foreign), Operation Attain Document, US Air Force, Libya
Reagan — Killed (2), Operation El Dorado Canyon, USAF, Libya
Reagan — Killed (290/foreign), Iran Air Flight 655/USS Vincennes, US Military, Persian Gulf/Iran
Reagan — Killed (37), USS Stark Missile Attack (FFG-31), Iraq Air Force, Iraq
Reagan — Killed (0/2 foreign), 1989 Gulf of Sidra Incident, US Air Force, Libya
Bush — Killed (24), Operation Just Cause, US Military, Panama
Clinton — Killed (90), Waco Siege/Branch Davidians, US Government, USA
Clinton — Killed (6), 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, Al Qaeda, Afghanistan
Clinton — Killed (168), Oklahoma City Bombing, Domestic/Foreign Terrorists*, USA/Iraq*
Clinton — Killed (19), Black Hawk Down, Islamic Warlords, Somalia
Clinton — Killed (17), USS Cole Bombing (DDG-67), Al Qaeda, port in Yemen
Clinton — Killed (142), TWA Flight 800, Foreign Terrorism [controversial*], Terrorists
Clinton — Killed (19), Khobar Towers Bombing, Hizballah Al-Hijaz [terrorists], Saudi Arabia
Clinton — Killed (12), 1998 US Embassy Bombings, Al Qaeda/Osama bin Ladin, Tanzania/Kenya
Clinton — Killed (0/35 foreign), Operation Infinite Reach, US Air Force, Afghanistan/Sudan
Bush — Hostages (24), Hainan Island incident (EP-3 Aries), 11 days, China
Bush — Killed (2,998), 9/11 Attack, Al Qaeda, Afghanistan
Bush — Killed (3), US Diplomatic Security Specialists, PA Terrorists, PA Territory/Gaza
Bush — Killed (19), Riyadh Compound Bombings, Islamic Terrorists, Saudi Arabia
Bush — Killed (1), Khobar Massacre, The Jerusalem Squadron/Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia
Obama — Hostages (1), MV Maersk Alabama Piracy, Somalia Pirates, Somalia

—

—

Please help add more so I can update this. If there is another event that happened within a particular President’s term (hostages taken, military killed in actions regarding the crisis, etc...), give me the info and any pertinent links. Still working on it and adding information...

—

Here’s where it all started, and then some FReepers started giving me some more events.. :-)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2226437/posts?page=5#5

AND THEN... it’s turned into this one... LOL...

Well, you stick your nose into the middle of a war, you’re liable to get your nose blown off...

This is interesting. The first forum I was ever involved in was the Sink The Liberty Forum on *Prodigy in 1988.

Here’s an account from Israel...

MYTH

“During the 1967 War, Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty.”

FACT

The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was a grievous error, largely attributable to the fact that it occurred in the midst of the confusion of a full-scale war in 1967. Ten official United States investigations and three official Israeli inquiries have all conclusively established the attack was a tragic mistake.

On June 8, 1967, the fourth day of the Six-Day War, the Israeli high command received reports that Israeli troops in El Arish were being fired upon from the sea, presumably by an Egyptian vessel, as they had a day before. The United States had announced that it had no naval forces within hundreds of miles of the battle front on the floor of the United Nations a few days earlier; however, the USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship assigned to monitor the fighting, arrived in the area, 14 miles off the Sinai coast, as a result of a series of United States communication failures, whereby messages directing the ship not to approach within 100 miles were not received by the Liberty. The Israelis mistakenly thought this was the ship doing the shelling and war planes and torpedo boats attacked, killing 34 members of the Liberty’s crew and wounding 171.

Numerous mistakes were made by both the United States and Israel. For example, the Liberty was first reported — incorrectly, as it turned out — to be cruising at 30 knots (it was later recalculated to be 28 knots). Under Israeli (and U.S.) naval doctrine at the time, a ship proceeding at that speed was presumed to be a warship. The sea was calm and the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry found that the Liberty’s flag was very likely drooped and not discernible; moreover, members of the crew, including the Captain, Commander William McGonagle, testified that the flag was knocked down after the first or second assault.

According to Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s memoirs, there were standing orders to attack any unidentified vessel near the shore.28 The day fighting began, Israel had asked that American ships be removed from its coast or that it be notified of the precise location of U.S. vessels.29 The Sixth Fleet was moved because President Johnson feared being drawn into a confrontation with the Soviet Union. He also ordered that no aircraft be sent near Sinai.

A CIA report on the incident issued June 13, 1967, also found that an overzealous pilot could mistake the Liberty for an Egyptian ship, the El Quseir. After the air raid, Israeli torpedo boats identified the Liberty as an Egyptian naval vessel. When the Liberty began shooting at the Israelis, they responded with the torpedo attack, which killed 28 of the sailors.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff investigated the communications failure and noted that the Chief of Naval Operations expressed concern about the prudence of sending the Liberty so close to the area of hostilities and four messages were subsequently sent instructing the ship to move farther away from the area of hostilities. The JCS report said the messages were never received because of “a combination of (1) human error, (2) high volume of communications traffic, and (3) lack of appreciation of sense of urgency regarding the movement of the Liberty.” The report also included a copy of a flash cable sent immediately after the attack, which reported that Israel had “erroneously” attacked the Liberty, that IDF helicopters were in rescue operations, and that Israel had sent “abject apologies” and requested information on any other U.S. ships near the war zone.

Initially, the Israelis were terrified that they had attacked a Soviet ship and might have provoked the Soviets to join the fighting.30 Once the Israelis were sure what had happened, they reported the incident to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and offered to provide a helicopter for the Americans to fly out to the ship and any help they required to evacuate the injured and salvage the ship. The offer was accepted and a U.S. naval attaché was flown to the Liberty.

The Israelis were “obviously shocked” by the error they made in attacking the ship, according to the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv. In fact, according to a secret report on the 1967 war, the immediate concern was that the Arabs might see the proximity of the Liberty to the conflict as evidence of U.S.-Israel collusion.30a

Many of the survivors of the Liberty remain bitter, and are convinced the attack was deliberate as they make clear on their web site. In 1991, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak trumpeted their discovery of an American who said he had been in the Israeli war room when the decision was made to knowingly attack the American ship.31 In fact, that individual, Seth Mintz, wrote a letter to the Washington Post on November 9, 1991, in which he said he was misquoted by Evans and Novak and that the attack, was, in fact, a “case of mistaken identity.” Moreover, the man who Mintz originally said had been with him, a Gen. Benni Matti, does not exist.

Also, contrary to claims that an Israeli pilot identified the ship as American on a radio tape, no one has ever produced this tape. In fact, the official Israeli Air Force tape clearly established that no such identification of the ship was made by the Israeli pilots prior to the attack. Tapes of the radio transmissions made prior, during and after the attack do not contain any statement suggesting the pilots saw a U.S. flag before the attack. During the attack, a pilot specifically says, “there is no flag on her!” The recordings also indicate that once the pilots became concerned about the identity of the ship, by virtue of reading its hull number, they terminated the attack and they were given an order to leave the area. A transcript of the radio transmissions indicates the entire incident, beginning with the spotting of a mysterious vessel off El Arish and ending with the chief air controller at general headquarters in Tel Aviv telling another controller the ship was “apparently American” took 24 minutes.32 Critics claimed the Israeli tape was doctored, but the National Security Agency of the United States released formerly top secret transcripts in July 2003 that confirmed the Israeli version.

A U.S. spy plane was sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of the attack on the Liberty and recorded the conversations of two Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37 p.m. on June 8. The orders radioed to the pilots by their supervisor at the Hatzor base instructing them to search for Egyptian survivors from the “Egyptian warship” that had just been bombed were also recorded by the NSA. “Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian,” the pilots were informed. Nine minutes later, Hatzor told the pilots the ship was believed to be an Egyptian cargo ship. At 3:07, the pilots were first told the ship might not be Egyptian and were instructed to search for survivors and inform the base immediately the nationality of the first person they rescued. It was not until 3:12 that one of the pilots reported that he saw an American flag flying over the ship at which point he was instructed to verify if it was indeed a U.S. vessel.33

In October 2003, the first Israeli pilot to reach the ship broke his 36-year silence on the attack. Brig.-Gen. Yiftah Spector, a triple ace, who shot down 15 enemy aircraft and took part in the 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor, said he had been told an Egyptian ship was off the Gaza coast. “This ship positively did not have any symbol or flag that I could see. What I was concerned with was that it was not one of ours. I looked for the symbol of our navy, which was a large white cross on its deck. This was not there, so it wasn’t one of ours.” The Jerusalem Post obtained a recording of Spector’s radio transmission in which he said, “I can’t identify it, but in any case it’s a military ship.”34

None of Israel’s accusers can explain why Israel would deliberately attack an American ship at a time when the United States was Israel’s only friend and supporter in the world. Confusion in a long line of communications, which occurred in a tense atmosphere on both the American and Israeli sides (five messages from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the ship to remain at least 25 miles — the last four said 100 miles — off the Egyptian coast arrived after the attack was over) is a more probable explanation.

Accidents caused by “friendly fire” are common in wartime. In 1988, the U.S. Navy mistakenly downed an Iranian passenger plane, killing 290 civilians. During the Gulf War, 35 of the 148 Americans who died in battle were killed by “friendly fire.” In April 1994, two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters with large U.S. flags painted on each side were shot down by U.S. Air Force F-15s on a clear day in the “no fly” zone of Iraq, killing 26 people. In April 2002, an American F-16 dropped a bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. In fact, the day before the Liberty was attacked, Israeli pilots accidentally bombed one of their own armored columns.35

Retired Admiral, Shlomo Erell, who was Chief of the Navy in Israel in June 1967, told the Associated Press (June 5, 1977): “No one would ever have dreamt that an American ship would be there. Even the United States didn’t know where its ship was. We were advised by the proper authorities that there was no American ship within 100 miles.”

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Congress on July 26, 1967: “It was the conclusion of the investigatory body, headed by an admiral of the Navy in whom we have great confidence, that the attack was not intentional.”

In 1987, McNamara repeated his belief that the attack was a mistake, telling a caller on the “Larry King Show” that he had seen nothing in the 20 years since to change his mind that there had been no “cover up.”36

In January 2004, the State Department held a conference on the Liberty incident and also released new documents, including CIA memos dated June 13 and June 21, 1967, that say that Israel did not know it was striking an American vessel. The historian for the National Security Agency, David Hatch, said the available evidence “strongly suggested” Israel did not know it was attacking a U.S. ship. Two former U.S. officials, Ernest Castle, the United States Naval Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in June 1967, who received the first report of the attack from Israel, and John Hadden, then CIA Chief of Station in Tel Aviv, also agreed with the assessment that the attack on the Liberty was a mistake.37

The new documents do not shed any light on the mystery of what the ship was doing in the area or why Israel was not informed about its presence. The evidence suggests the ship was not spying on Israel.

Israel apologized for the tragedy and paid nearly $13 million in humanitarian reparations to the United States and to the families of the victims in amounts established by the U.S. State Department. The matter was officially closed between the two governments by an exchange of diplomatic notes on December 17, 1987.

from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf6.html
[towards the very bottom of the page...]

Note that the Soviets were wanting to “move in on Israel”... and they are the ones who “set up” the Six Day War that Israel engaged in.

A small section quoted from the article below....

—

Rather than do so directly, however, Moscow devised a complex scheme to lure the Israelis into starting a war which would end with a Soviet attack on Dimona. Militarily, the Kremlin prepared by surrounding Israel with an armada of nuclear-armed forces in both the Mediterranean and Red seas, pre-positioning mat riel on land, and training troops nearby with the expectation of using them. Perhaps the most startling information in Foxbats over Dimona concerns the detailed plans for Soviet troops to attack Israeli territory, and specifically to bombard oil refineries and reservoirs, and reach out to Israeli Arabs. No less eye-opening is to learn that Soviet photo-reconnaissance MiG-25s (the “Foxbats” of the title) directly overflew the Dimona reactor in May 1967.

Politically, the scheme consisted of fabricating intelligence reports about Israeli threats to Syria, thereby goading the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces to go on war-footing. As his Soviet masters then instructed, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser moved his troops toward Israel, removed a United Nations buffer force, and blockaded a key naval route to Israel - three steps that together compelled the Israelis to move to a full-alert defense. Unable to sustain this posture for long, they struck first, thereby, it appeared, falling into the Soviet trap.

—

And you better believe it, that Russia (the remainder of what is left of the Soviet Union) will be engaged again, in the future, in trying to “take out” Israel — in the Gog/Magog War in Ezekiel 38/39...

The Soviets’ Six Day War

- Daniel Pipes, Jerusalem Post May. 30th 2007

One of the great enigmas of the modern Middle East is why, 40 years ago next week, the Six-Day War took place. Neither Israel nor its Arab neighbors wanted or expected a fight in June 1967; the consensus view among historians holds that the unwanted combat resulted from a sequence of accidents.

Enter Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, a wife-husband team, to challenge the accident theory and offer a plausible explanation for the causes of the war. As suggested by the title of their book, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale University Press), they argue that it originated in a scheme by the Soviet politburo to eliminate Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona, and with it the country’s aspiration to develop nuclear weapons.

The text reads like the solution to a mystery, amassing information from voluminous sources, guiding readers step-by-step through the argument, making an intuitively compelling case that must be taken seriously. In summary, it goes like this:

Moshe Sneh, an Israeli communist leader (and father of Ephraim Sneh, the country’s current deputy minister of defense) told the Soviet ambassador in December 1965 that an advisor to the prime minister had informed him about “Israel’s intention to produce its own atomic bomb.” Leonid Brezhnev and his colleagues received this piece of information with dead seriousness and decided - as did the Israelis about Iraq in 1981 and may be doing about Iran in 2007 - to abort this process through air strikes.

Rather than do so directly, however, Moscow devised a complex scheme to lure the Israelis into starting a war which would end with a Soviet attack on Dimona. Militarily, the Kremlin prepared by surrounding Israel with an armada of nuclear-armed forces in both the Mediterranean and Red seas, pre-positioning mat riel on land, and training troops nearby with the expectation of using them. Perhaps the most startling information in Foxbats over Dimona concerns the detailed plans for Soviet troops to attack Israeli territory, and specifically to bombard oil refineries and reservoirs, and reach out to Israeli Arabs. No less eye-opening is to learn that Soviet photo-reconnaissance MiG-25s (the “Foxbats” of the title) directly overflew the Dimona reactor in May 1967.

Politically, the scheme consisted of fabricating intelligence reports about Israeli threats to Syria, thereby goading the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces to go on war-footing. As his Soviet masters then instructed, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser moved his troops toward Israel, removed a United Nations buffer force, and blockaded a key naval route to Israel - three steps that together compelled the Israelis to move to a full-alert defense. Unable to sustain this posture for long, they struck first, thereby, it appeared, falling into the Soviet trap.

But then the Israel Defense Forces did something astonishing. Rather than fight to a draw, as the Soviets expected, they quickly won what I have called “the most overwhelming victory in the annals of warfare.” Using purely conventional means, they defeated three enemy Arab states in six days, thereby preempting the planned Soviet invasion, which had to be scuttled.

Moscow’s responsibility for the Six-Day War has disappeared

This fiasco made the elaborate Soviet scheme look inept, and Moscow understandably decided to obscure its own role in engineering the war (its second major strategic debacle of the decade - the attempt to place missiles in Cuba having been the first). The cover-up succeeded so well that Moscow’s responsibility for the Six-Day War has disappeared from histories of the conflict. Thus, a specialist on the war like Michael Oren, has coolly received the Ginor-Remez thesis, saying he has not found “any documentary evidence to support” it.

If Foxbats over Dimona is not the definitive word, it offers a viable, exciting interpretation for others to chew on, with many implications. Today’s Arab-Israeli conflict, with its focus on the territories won in 1967, accompanied by virulent anti-Semitism, results in large part from Kremlin decisions made four decades ago. The whole exercise was for naught, as Israeli possession of nuclear weapons had limited impact on the Soviet Union before it expired in 1991. And, as the authors note , “21st century nostalgia for the supposed stability of the Cold War is largely illusory.”

Finally, 40 years later, where might things be had the Soviets’ Six-Day War not occurred? However bad circumstances are at present, they would presumably be yet worse without that stunning Israeli victory.

http://www.sixdaywar.co.uk/news_articles-soviets-six-day-war.htm
by Daniel Pipes