[aristeides]

Actually, I have a good reason to keep asking for evidence. If memory serves, somebody (I think it was Poohbah) responded to my requests for evidence for the claims being made that the Egyptian army was acting as if it was getting intelligence from somewhere by giving a page reference to Dupuy's book about the Arab-Israeli wars. I didn't have the book at the time, so I couldn't check. I now have that book. I read the sections on the Liberty and on the Egyptian front in the '67 war. I found no statements of the kind we were told would be there. I suspect it's all a convenient myth. But perhaps I was looking in the wrong place. So I'm asking again for that page reference.

By the way, Dupuy was obviously totally unsatisfied with the official explanations of the attack on the Liberty, including the Israeli one. I can't quote the book now, as it's in my office.

Yes, you are cold-blooded. By the way, did you ever consider the possibility that whatever the Israelis concluded about what the Liberty was doing might have been wrong? Do you think it's proper to kill American sailors in total violation of international law, even when you've made a mistake?

[Poohbah]

Well, I wasn't talking about Dupuy's analysis of the Liberty, I was talking about the behavior of the Egytpian Army just after they'd received the worst drubbing they'd gotten since the Exodus. They are two different (but related) things. Second, the last time I'd read Dupuy's work was about ten years ago, in connection with a wargame design project. Unfortunately, I read about thirty or so other books on the topic at that time, and Dupuy's name was the one that came out of my head first.

The whole problem I had is that what SHOULD have happened was completely at variance with what DID actually happen. The Egyptian Army managed to achieve a higher state of situational awareness than was otherwise possible--which meant that they were getting help.

Like Dupuy, I am unsatisfied with the Israeli explanation for the Liberty. I am also enough of a realist to understand that we aren't going to get the honest-to-God truth because Israel understands its place as a Great Power client state--namely, that they are to make themselves look completely foolish in preference to embarrassing their Great Power patron. The United States isn't going to embarrass themselves. Therefore, we are not going to get the truth.

As for why the Liberty was assigned to that mission--do you really think that the government is some monolithic entity with perfectly coherent goals, and that nobody within that government is going to work counter to stated policy?