FINALLY Some Truth about the USS Liberty
JENNIFER C. KERR | 23.10.2003 04:21 | Anti-militarism | Repression | World
And NOW, are there ANY Israeli high level ranking military men of HONOR..ANY Israeli soldiers or men.. ANYWHERE who will Break this Ugly Wall of Silence and present the Truth about this?
NOW WOULD BE THE TIME.
NOW WOULD BE THE TIME.
WASHINGTON - A former Navy attorney who helped lead the military investigation of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 American servicemen says former President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered that the inquiry conclude the incident was an accident.
In a signed affidavit released at a Capitol Hill news conference, retired Capt. Ward Boston said Johnson and McNamara told those heading the Navy's inquiry to "conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."
Boston was senior legal counsel to the Navy's original 1967 review of the attack. He said in the sworn statement that he stayed silent for years because he's a military man, and "when orders come ... I follow them."
He said he felt compelled to "share the truth" following the publication of a recent book, "The Liberty Incident," which concluded the attack was unintentional.
The USS Liberty was an electronic intelligence-gathering ship that was cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast on June 8, 1967. Israeli planes and torpedo boats opened fire on the Liberty at what became known as the outbreak of the Israeli-Egyptian Six-Day War.
In addition to the 34 Americans killed, more than 170 were wounded.
Israel has long maintained that the attack was a case of mistaken identity, an explanation that the Johnson administration did not formally challenge. Israel claimed its forces thought the ship was an Egyptian vessel and apologized to the United States.
After the attack, a Navy court of inquiry concluded there was insufficient information to make a judgment about why Israel attacked the ship, stopping short of assigning blame or determining whether it was an accident.
It was "one of the classic all-American cover-ups," said Ret. Adm. Thomas Moorer, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who spent a year investigating the attack as part of an independent panel he formed with other former military officials. The panel also included a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins.
"Why would our government put Israel's interests ahead of our own?" Moorer asked from his wheelchair at the news conference. He was chief of naval operations at the time of the attack.
Moorer, who has long held that the attack was a deliberate act, wants Congress to investigate.
Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev disputed any notion that Israel knowingly went after American sailors.
"I can say unequivocally that the Liberty tragedy was a terrible accident, that the Israeli pilots involved believed they were attacking an enemy ship," Regev said. "This was in the middle of a war. This is something that we are not proud of."
Calls to the Navy seeking comment were not immediately returned.
In Boston's statement, he does not say why Johnson would have ordered a cover-up. Attempts were made to reach Boston at his home in Coronado, Calif., but he did not return calls seeking comment.
Moorer's panel suggested several possible reasons Israel might have wanted to attack a U.S. ship. Among them: Israel intended to sink the ship and blame Egypt because it might have brought the United States into the 1967 war
http://www.ussliberty.org/
In a signed affidavit released at a Capitol Hill news conference, retired Capt. Ward Boston said Johnson and McNamara told those heading the Navy's inquiry to "conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."
Boston was senior legal counsel to the Navy's original 1967 review of the attack. He said in the sworn statement that he stayed silent for years because he's a military man, and "when orders come ... I follow them."
He said he felt compelled to "share the truth" following the publication of a recent book, "The Liberty Incident," which concluded the attack was unintentional.
The USS Liberty was an electronic intelligence-gathering ship that was cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast on June 8, 1967. Israeli planes and torpedo boats opened fire on the Liberty at what became known as the outbreak of the Israeli-Egyptian Six-Day War.
In addition to the 34 Americans killed, more than 170 were wounded.
Israel has long maintained that the attack was a case of mistaken identity, an explanation that the Johnson administration did not formally challenge. Israel claimed its forces thought the ship was an Egyptian vessel and apologized to the United States.
After the attack, a Navy court of inquiry concluded there was insufficient information to make a judgment about why Israel attacked the ship, stopping short of assigning blame or determining whether it was an accident.
It was "one of the classic all-American cover-ups," said Ret. Adm. Thomas Moorer, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who spent a year investigating the attack as part of an independent panel he formed with other former military officials. The panel also included a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins.
"Why would our government put Israel's interests ahead of our own?" Moorer asked from his wheelchair at the news conference. He was chief of naval operations at the time of the attack.
Moorer, who has long held that the attack was a deliberate act, wants Congress to investigate.
Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev disputed any notion that Israel knowingly went after American sailors.
"I can say unequivocally that the Liberty tragedy was a terrible accident, that the Israeli pilots involved believed they were attacking an enemy ship," Regev said. "This was in the middle of a war. This is something that we are not proud of."
Calls to the Navy seeking comment were not immediately returned.
In Boston's statement, he does not say why Johnson would have ordered a cover-up. Attempts were made to reach Boston at his home in Coronado, Calif., but he did not return calls seeking comment.
Moorer's panel suggested several possible reasons Israel might have wanted to attack a U.S. ship. Among them: Israel intended to sink the ship and blame Egypt because it might have brought the United States into the 1967 war
http://www.ussliberty.org/
JENNIFER C. KERR
Homepage:
http://www.ussliberty.org/
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(article from Socialist Worker, a few months back; says it all)
23.10.2003 14:48
By Mike Rosen
I GUESS readers of this paper were delighted to read that 50 reservist Israeli army officers had refused to serve in the West Bank. They have signed a petition saying, "We will not fight beyond the Green Line [Israel's 1967 border with the West Bank] in order to rule, expel, destroy, blockade, assassinate, starve and humiliate an entire people."
If you were a Zionist then you could explain this petition as the work of anti-Semites. What a disgusting slander, you'd say, to suggest that Jews would want to destroy the entire Palestinian people! This, you'd add, is part of a new and dangerous tendency. On the one side there is the whole Muslim world describing Jews in much the same way as the Nazis described Jews 70 years ago.
On the other, there are the middle class intellectuals gleefully climbing on the bandwagon of criticising Israel as a cover for their real loathing of the Jews. There is of course a slight problem-explaining away the fact that the petition was written by Israeli Jews. How can Jewish Zionists, as these reservists probably are, be anti-Semitic?
Well, there is always the fallback position of saying that they are (1) political pawns of the Israeli Labour Party and so are just stirring up trouble for Sharon's Likud Party, or (2) they are "self hating Jews". The purpose of this argument is that you don't have to deal with the content of the petition.
Most of this would just be a row inside Israel if it weren't for the fact that the word "anti-Semitism" rightly causes a tremor across the Western world.
The Holocaust is not just simply a matter of horror. It's also a question of shame. How could it be that civilised Europe could conduct genocide against one of its peoples? Though people find this question hard to answer, the main result of asking it has been that liberal thinking people have felt wary of saying anything that could be taken as being anti-Semitic.
But suddenly the Zionists are saying repressed and hidden anti-Semitism has bubbled up everywhere. Any kind of racism is a terrible danger to life and society. The problem with this new Jewish alarm is that it's all wound up with the issue of Israel. Anthony Julius in last week's Guardian claimed that anyone who attacked Jews' right to "national self determination" was anti-Semitic, because they deny Jews the right to have what most liberals are prepared to give others.
Nice try, this. But what even liberals can see is that when we say everyone has the right to self determination that doesn't include denying it to others. When Hitler asked for the right of Germans in the Sudetenland, Danzig and the Tyrol to self determination, in itself this wasn't an illegitimate claim. The crunch came in what he did with any non-German within and surrounding those territories-a mixture of forced emigration, enslavement and genocide.
My view is simple. As long as the Jewish establishment tells the world that Jews are Zionists, then they can only expect criticism of Zionism to sound like criticism of all Jews to them.
What the reservists have shown is that a Jew's first loyalty doesn't have to be to the Israeli state right or wrong, or even to Jews right or wrong, but to a set of values that apply to all peoples. That's one of the starting points for real freedom for us all.
kurious
Proof... not fantasy
25.10.2003 14:31
Thirty-four Americans were killed and 171 injured in the attack on the U.S. naval ship. Israel has always said it attacked what it thought was an Egyptian supply ship bringing supplies to Egyptian troops that Israel was battling.
But Israel’s detractors have continued to insist over the years that Israel deliberately targeted the ship, fearing the Americans were spying on them during the Six-Day War.
On a tape recorded by an American spy plane in the area, an Israeli ground controller is heard communicating with Israeli rescue helicopter pilots sent in after the attack, who identified the ship as an Egyptian vessel.
“For your information, it is apparently an Arab ship.”
“Roger.”
“It is an Egyptian supply ship.
“Roger.”
Miami Judge Jay Cristol, who persuaded the NSA to release the classified tapes and has researched the Liberty incident for years, told CNN that they show the attack was an accident.
“I don’t think there’s any question that anyone who reads these tapes would be absolutely convinced that there was the fog of war out there,” Cristol told CNN.
The Israelis later in the tape sound seem confused and concerned. The pilots are ordered to check the survivors’ nationality.
“If they speak Arabic, Egyptians, you’re taking them to Al Arish. If they speak English, non-Egyptians, you’re taking them to Lod. Is that clear?” “Roger.”
One of the Israeli helicopter pilots is heard telling ground control that he saw an American flag and is then ordered to return and check again, suggesting they were surprised that the ship could be American vessel.
Israel has released its own recordings of conversations in the past, which it said supported its version of events. Conspiracy theorists said Israel doctored the tapes.
Sonic