Posted on 04/15/2002 12:23:49 PM PDT by Republican_Strategist
A lot of people who care about what happened to American servicemen on the USS Liberty couldn't care less about Israel, pro or con. That will change if Americans are sent to fight there...it just would not make the US more secure from terrorism, and there are plenty of us who wouldn't want to see one drop of US blood lost to save Israel.
And why are you opposed to reinvestigating this by a panel of researchers who can be objective? In this country, we're constantly reinvestigating and reevaluating people and events, right back to pre-Colonial settlement of North America. It's called searching for the truth.
Nope. Powers was a spy pilot. His airplane had almost as much armament as the USS Liberty. In case you haven't noticed it, photos of the Liberty don't show many gun barrels. Not much room to land airplanes or helicopters, and for some strange reason no Tomahawk tubes....
But don't worry, I'm sure the pilot's were just "following orders" and it was the higher ups that bear the real responsibility.
Dictionaries are not international law. In international law, all military vessels (with the exception of civilian-manned auxiliaries) are "combatants" at all times--but for someone who has no idea what "holiday/garrison colors" means, it is liable to be a very difficult idea to handle.
The Israelis were either trigger happy, and thus criminal, or "just following orders", and thus criminal, or blind, and criminally irresponsible.
There was no excuse to target and attack a neutral vessel in international waters. We had every excuse we could have wanted if we'd desired to erase Israel.
I have no need for the place, as I've said.
Re: no Tomahawk tubes: the "strange reason" she didn't have any is that Tomahawks hadn't been invented yet. A minor detail, but one that's rather telling as to your ability to understand the Navy...
Again: all we have is the word of the National Security Agency that the USS Liberty was not engaged in any combatant operations whatsoever. And, of course, all those brave young lads in C-130s, PB4Y Privateers, and other "raven" aircraft were just on "routine navigation training flights" when they got bounced by Communist fighters...
If the Liberty was engaged in electronic intelligence gathering, she wandered into a gray area of international law--had she entered any nation's territorial waters (and the question is in dispute on this one--just what were the territorial waters of Egypt and Israel at the time?), she had no right of "innocent passage" due to her mission. If she was helping the US furnish said intelligence to the Egyptians, she went from being a "neutral-flagged warship" to "actively engaging in combat operations."
And I know enough about the NSA and about ol' Lyndon's "awl bidness" friends to know that (a) it's even money--or better--that we WERE trying to pass intel to Egypt, and (b) if we were, the NSA shredded every damn document to do with the op as soon as they heard the Liberty was under attack.
The Israelis attacked the Liberty in multiple waves for five hours. Only silly, insipid idiots can possibly expect that no one is going to question that.
The attack was deliberate, just as the Israelis' repeated attempts to plant spies in high level positions in the Pentagon are beyond question. So stop yelling about it.
The question is: "Is Israel worth our time and effort?" I'm beginning to think not, and so are many other conservatives. Perhaps if they wouldn't so often bite the hand that continues to feed them, they'd get a bit more sympathy from me at least.
China-Israel ties worry US
One element of the diplomatic crisis that erupted between Washington and Beijing this spring, after a US surveillance aircraft narrowly survived a close encounter with a Chinese warplane, went almost unnoticed in the drama surrounding the fate of the American crew.
Photographs released by the Pentagon of two Chinese jets that had shadowed the EP-3E Aries II on April 1 showed they were armed with Israeli-made Python air-to-air missiles. It was the first public proof of what had for years been an open secret in the defence community – that Israel is a supplier of sophisticated modern weaponry to the Chinese military.
2) I post "for some strange reason" as I did because I was making the point that the ship not only had no visible weapons, but non-aircraft-transported low profile naval weaponry able to influence battles far ashore had not been invented in 1967.
BTW: The US had quit building battleships more than a few weeks before the Liberty had been dispatched to the area.
She had no weapons of note, a point you are not refuting.
This raises some interesting questions, which the Israel supporters won't ask.
If the US was intent on helping the Egyptians, the best thing we could have done was to quit supporting the Israelis. Without our assistance, Israel would have ceased to exist long ago.
Considering the amount of heartache, money, and pain Israel has cost us, why would we have continued to support them if we were giving active support to the Camel Jockeys?
And the $3,000,000,000 question is that no one can answer how support of Israel is in our best interest.
In 1967, we weren't supporting Israel in the manner you describe. Part of the reason we started to do so was that we realized that we MIGHT want to put a choke-chain on them from time to time.
Considering the amount of heartache, money, and pain Israel has cost us, why would we have continued to support them if we were giving active support to the Camel Jockeys?
You obviously are not a student of the "awl bidness," and LBJ's connections to same. You simply assume that the US government is a monolithic entity, with no factionalization or competing interests.
However, your breed makes it tough on most American Jews who are Americans first and maybe Jewish after that.
So, next time you want to tell me you don't care what I think, don't bring up a subject with which you have no experience. You can stomp your feet all you like, but I'll still be happy to knock that obnoxious chip off your hump.
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