Posted on 10/30/2002 3:37:06 PM PST by yonif
And apparently the Nationalists were willing and able to kill the Socialist (Rabin).
As for China, it has never had a legitimate claim to East Turkestan, Outer Mongolia, or Taiwan.
The unifying factor was nationalism. This particularism is antithetical to communism.
Communists and Nationalists don't like each other much. Nationalist Socialists are generally referred to as Fascists. You're not really saying that Israel is Fascist are you?
So now you want to show your ignorance on political Ideology?
Fascism was created by ex-communist nationalists in Italy like Mussolini. The means of production were partially owned by the government, but were controlled throw shared government-party-company management. I suppose that economic Facism light exists in Israel, but it exists in all corporate Democracies, including the US.
The Socialists in Israel mainly believed in union and government co-ownership of the means of production.
There was a time when Democrats were nationalist. Are you calling them Fascist?
Is government investment in private industry fascism?
I don't believe I claimed that they were. How does this relate to my statement?
In a letter reference SC No. 07445/67 dated July 18, 1967 from Clark Clifford to LBJ Mr. Clifford states in part, "Prior to the attack no inquiry was made by the Israeli Government as to whether there were U.S. flag vessels in the general area of the Eastern Mediterranean adjoining Israel and the United Arab Republic."
You hold that these inquiries were incomplete.
Not true.
We hold not that these inquiries are incomplete but they are not investigations of the attack on the USS Liberty as some have alleged but cannot substantiate.
Even JAG publicly holds that their USNavy Court of Inquiry did not include an investigation of the attack.
Warmest regards
Joe
For me only since 1980 but you couldn't have known that.
We'll continue until the US government finally conducts the investigation of the attack that routinely follows an incident of this kind but -- for reasons as yet unexplained even to those of us who were there -- has been denied the attack on the USS Liberty.
That's the least we can do for our fallen shipmates.
And that would be an accurate statement. Again, this stuff was going down literally on the other side of the planet from Washington--the battle group commander ordered the launch, not MacNamara.
That's where it gets wierd. Perhaps, he was just a bit too general in his denial and he didn't mean to imply that.
No, he's just rebutting the claim by the "Capitol Hill is Israeli-Occupied Territory" crowd that MacNamara, acting on orders from the Zionist Overlords of America, ordered the strike recalled.
Then again, given Cristol's tendency to distort the truth, I don't have a problem believing he denied that any planes were dispatched and recalled.
I don't doubt that the attack on the Liberty was deliberate. However, I do not believe that the Israelis are a bunch of trigger-happy yahoos, either--they are an anomoly in the Middle East, a nation with a somewhat rational agenda. The NSA's reticence as to the Liberty's actual mission--especially when coupled with the cover story they put out via Mr. Ennes' book, said cover story being a complete load of Bravo Sierra--makes me very suspicious of Mr. Ennes' claims that the USS Liberty was just minding its own business when those bad ol' Israelis started bombing them and intended to sink them. WTF were we doing, when were we doing it, and who signed off on the mission tasking? My guess: that material has long since been consigned to the monster shredder at Fort George Meade, because it was a rogue op.
If Mr. Ennes had merely declined to state the mission of the Liberty for "national security reasons," I probably wouldn't be this suspicious. But when he became the conduit for a lie by a national intelligence agency, he lost a big chunk of his credibility.
By the way, what sort of rogue operation are you thinking of? Would it be one that would justify an Israeli attack on the ship? (Likeliest kind of rogue operation to my mind would be an independent decision of the Joint Chiefs that they kept secret from LBJ, just for the purpose of keeping themselves informed about what was going on in the Middle East -- if that's what it was, I don't see how that would justify the attack.)
Hmm. So someone got the word to the White House, and the White House staff got LBJ awake and sober enough to make decisions, and get him on SATCOM before the birds got to the target? Far more believable for 1997 instead of 1967--the Navy communications system was reliable (the message would get there, eventually), but not swift. By the time the message got to Navy Headquarters, the appropriate staffers woken up, and the message passed up through the chain of command, we're talking HOURS, not minutes.
And, conveniently, the only folks who can actually confirm that Geis was told this are LBJ and Geis, who are both conveniently deceased.
By the way, what sort of rogue operation are you thinking of? Would it be one that would justify an Israeli attack on the ship?
Either it did actually justify said attack, or the idea was to make it appear to the Israelis that an attack was justified.
(Likeliest kind of rogue operation to my mind would be an independent decision of the Joint Chiefs that they kept secret from LBJ, just for the purpose of keeping themselves informed about what was going on in the Middle East -- if that's what it was, I don't see how that would justify the attack.)
You're not thinking in sufficiently Byzantine terms. The JCS had little authority over the NSA, and that's where you need to concentrate your thinking. You have to remember that the NSA deliberately cut off the ship from its chain of command--Sixth Fleet could still technically give it orders, but those orders had to reach the ship through NSA-approved and controlled channels, and those channels "mysteriously" broke down right when it was crucial to get the Liberty out of the area, and right when Sixth Fleet was desperately trying to send the ship a message to get out of there.
The NSA is pretty good at working up cover stories. This one was put together in a hurry, and the authors didn't check the relevant facts in the NSA archives--which suggests that the archives were not accessible. The only reason for THAT would be if the op was a rogue one. This wasn't an issue in 1980, when Ennes wrote his book--the only other archive that had the facts was in Moscow. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the cover story. Turns out that the Soviet bombers the Liberty was supposedly monitoring in-flight radio transmissions from were on the ground in Alexandria--way the heck away from the Liberty.
By the way, you still haven't explained what sort of rogue operation you are thinking of. Whether the orders came from the Joint Chiefs or from the NSA, I still don't see what the Liberty could have been doing that would justify the Israeli attack. Could you please explain what you are hinting at. Maybe I am thick, but I don't understand what you're hinting.
Bamford also alleges that the Liberty was attacked to cover up an Israeli atrocity that appears to have been a complete fabrication by the Islamofascists, without any supporting documentation in Egypt. Bamford is not immune to making really boneheaded mistakes.
However, the Joint Staff is a huge bureaucracy--perhaps an officer released a message as a favor to a buddy at the NSA.
By the way, you still haven't explained what sort of rogue operation you are thinking of. Whether the orders came from the Joint Chiefs or from the NSA, I still don't see what the Liberty could have been doing that would justify the Israeli attack. Could you please explain what you are hinting at. Maybe I am thick, but I don't understand what you're hinting.
You have an intelligence-gathering platform operating off of the coast of two nations at war. That's not a problem. They can sit there and gather all manner of intel to their hearts' content.
The question is, what were they DOING with the intel? If they were passing it on to Cairo (even indirectly), that is a bigtime no-no. That's just the same, under international law, as if the US Sixth Fleet steamed up and started supplying close air support to the Egyptians.
In 1973, we resupplied Israel via an airlift. If Egypt and Syria had had enough airpower to throw at the air bridge, and had bagged a few C-5s, well, that would've the fortunes of war--we were aiding a belligerent nation, after all.
There are two possibilities here: either (a) the Liberty was being used to gather intel on the Israelis, whereupon it was sent to Egypt, or (b) the presence of the Liberty was being used to launder some other SIGINT platform's take (SR-71, U-2, ferret satellite come to mind here).
In short, no matter how we slice it, if we decide to stick our noses into an ongoing fight, there's a finite chance that said nose might get punched.
Until you point out such evidence, you're just speculating. And I find it hard to imagine why bureaucrats or military people in the NSA or the Pentagon would want to provide intel to the Egyptians. Remember that the '67 war happened at the height of Nasser's rule in Egypt, when relations between Egypt and America were very strained, and years before we developed closer relations with Egypt.
No you didn't. You simply showed that the Russian Empire hadn't expanded out to those areas yet. The Soviets continued to expand in the same fashion as did the Russian Empire albeit with a more efficient government system in place.
I don't believe that Socialism requires government investment in private companies. Fascism does. The government can control the means of production without owning the companies.
You're not going to find a smoking gun in Dupuy's book (Dupuy was a consultant for the US military until his death in the 1990s, so he was NOT going to come out and say it directly even if he DID know all the sordid details), but he has commented on the Egyptian Army's ability to evade the final blow. Read up some more, including the more recent works on the 1967 war, and you'll put two and two together.
Until you point out such evidence, you're just speculating.
True enough, but it's far more informed speculation.
And I find it hard to imagine why bureaucrats or military people in the NSA or the Pentagon would want to provide intel to the Egyptians.
I don't. But, then again, I don't assume that the US military-intelligence community is a monolithic bloc, instantly obeying every single command from recognized and accredited seniors. The presence of various inter-departmental working groups that included State, Commerce ("follow the money" works any time you find commerce wandering around), and other interested agencies just makes it that much muddier. Lots of stuff gets handled "offline" at these working groups.
Remember that the '67 war happened at the height of Nasser's rule in Egypt, when relations between Egypt and America were very strained, and years before we developed closer relations with Egypt.
We didn't have 100% bad relations with Egypt, or their intelligence services. Nasser was the primus inter pares of the "Non-Aligned Nations" bloc in the UN, and was very used to playing both sides of the street. He did so very effectively. Sadat threw the Soviets out of Egypt in part because he didn't have Nasser's skill in playing the US and USSR off of each other, and the Soviets were trying to turn Egypt into an out-and-out Warsaw Pact member. He figured that the worst that could happen if he cozied up to the US is that the Americans would stick a Coca-Cola bottling plant in downtown Cairo, and not turn his military into a wholly-owned subsidiary :o)
Heck, in 1956, we saved Nasser's a$$ from the Israelis, French, and British. We were perfectly willing to quietly do business with Egypt if it meant that ARAMCO concessions just across the Red Sea would be left to comfortably pump Saudi crude.
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