USS Liberty: Accidental or Deliberate?

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Originally posted by Hardware:
Don't tell me you thought Israel was our friend, right?

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Oh no, *I* didn't think so, but there are folks on this board who do. They really, really think so.

(And oh my God. Piratenews is on my thread. Eeeeh.)

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"Maybe she's a lazy hooker. They can't all have hearts of gold and good work ethics." -- Jaye in Wonderfalls

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:
What could possibly be Israels rationale for deliberatly attacking their greatest ally?

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I've been thinking a lot about this demand for a motive before being willing to say an action was intentional and deliberate. If I may, here is another way to look at it.

Imagine you're walking alone on a deserted street at night. All of a sudden, someone is stabbing you. You try to fight, but the guy keeps stabbing and leaves you for dead. Eventually you're rescued and you go to the cops. Imagine how you might feel if the conversation went like this:

Cop: Why do you think he did it?
You: I have no idea! Maybe he wanted to rob me? I can't find my wallet anymore.
Cop: Maybe? That's conjecture! Maybe your wallet fell out during the struggle. You don't know?
You: I can make a guess, but I don't know for sure.
Cop: Well, if you don't know why he did it, I can't allow you to press charges.
You: What?! Just because I don't know why he did it doesn't mean he didn't do it!

This scenario is to illustrate only ONE point: that there is a big difference WHETHER something happened and WHY something happened. People DO commit violence without the victims knowing why.

WHETHER Liberty was attacked intentionally and WHY she was attacked are two separate questions. In the case of mistaken identity, you look at the pattern and severity of the attack vis-a-vis the information the Israeli's had before the attack.

First, pattern. See, this wasn't like most friendly fire: Bomb, Oops! This was bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, torpedo, torpedo, machine-gun, machine-gun, ooops. The extended nature and relatively close range of the attack makes the Ooops at the end a little less believable. The Ooops should have come sooner, a lot sooner. The pattern is inconsistent with other friendly fire scenarios.

Second, severity. If they made a mistake in identifying the ship, it means they did not conclusively confirm the flag or the markings of Liberty before firing. Without conclusive confirmation, did it warrant 821 holes in the ship, over 100 of which were rocket-sized? Did it warrant napalm canisters, aircraft cannons, rockets, and 5 torpedos? Did it warrant drive-by machine gun shootings on Liberty's firefighters, stretcher-bearers, and life rafts? If it was a mistake, the severity of the attack was unwarranted and someone should be accountable. The severity was inconsistent with the inconclusive information on which the attack was based.

Now the Israeli govt will say very little of that actually happened. Something like there were only 2 torpedos instead of 5. No one machine gunned the stretchers, etc.

So then it comes down to this. Who do you believe? The American soldiers who survived the attack that day, or the Israeli government? Personally, where the stories conflict, I choose to believe the American soldiers. Call me biased if you want, but I'd rather be biased towards the eyewitness testimonies of our American soldiers over the excuses of a foreign government. (Edited to add: And if that is construed as a bias, whoever believes the foreign government over our soldiers has a "bias" as well.)

Our American soldiers who got injured and died for us, for all of us, deserve that much.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:
What could possibly be Israels rationale for deliberatly attacking their greatest ally?

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I've been thinking a lot about this demand for a motive before being willing to say an action was intentional and deliberate.

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Or you could point out that France not the US was Israel's biggest ally at the time, and prior to 1968 the US consistently refused military aid and equipment and even opposed and threatened Israel during some previous actions.

So unless USS Liberty was a French ship you don't need to come up with a rationale for the Israelis deliberately attacking their greatest ally.

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More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

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Yeah, there’s the Moorer Report; that’s pretty recent. Once again, though we have that one critical piece of information that not even Admiral Moorer can explain: why would Israel attack an Americana ship? Saying that the attack was deliberate is meaningless, all attacks are deliberate. The question is whether it was a mistake. Until you can produce a motive that explains what Israel had to gain from the attack and Israel’s reaction following the attack, it’s difficult to argue that Israel wanted to attack the US.

But as far as reports go, there’s no lack of them: there is the US Navy Court of Inquiry, the CIA Report, the NSA Report, the Russ Report, the Clifford Report, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Report, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, the Senate Armed Services Committee Report, the House Appropriations Committee Report and two House Armed Services Committee Report. All of which arrived at a conclusion contrary to your opinion or did not provide a conclusion. And some of them seem to have been pretty critical of Israel. I get the impression that some people really wanted to believe that Israel had acted maliciously, but in the end, the evidence is simply not there to draw that conclusion.

And the US was an Israeli ally. Although I would say that their “greatest ally” at that time was probably Britain, not the US.

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Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Pirate News

Good to see you're still around.

I don't buy that Nero was a jew. He was a member of the julio-claudians, who i thought were pagans. you have a primary source for this?

I also think that the christians were largely sentenced for crimes they were guilty of. The christian underground was the al qaeda of its day, and had many little indiscretions we would now call terrorism

I also thought the burning of rome was largely a real estate scam. But I believe you're right he blames the christians and fed them to lions.

Israel as I understand it is actually "Soldier of God" and Hezbollah is "Party of God" at least those are the definitions that one will find most often if one searches the terms, and I think scholars generally agree. The problem is, no offense. that the God in question is Yhwh, Hibiru God of War, who was led to supremacy in a monotheistic revolution led by a group of real loonies who worshiped mt. sinai, and were known for many of the sorts of things you now associate with moloch.

The core here is that God is evil, on an objective scale, which is not to say by any means that jesus by extension was evil, because i don't think he was. But any objective reading of the bible shows that God, Yahweh, Jehova, or originally written yhwh, pronounced "Yahoveha," but called he who shall not be named, committed endless acts of torture, killing, genocide, and ecoside, and saw it all and said that it was good.

An objective ourside perspective, such as any of us on the board from easrten religions, of which I think there are a fair number here, myself included, that can read the book without bias and see that YHWH is the villain of the piece.

Interesting note:

YHWH became the nameless one because His high priests believed that if the followers spoke His name, or even knew it, that it would give them power over Him. They were not being metaphorical. It's a literal truth: speaking the name created two thing:

1. To make God one of many, if He had a name, He is not the same being as Elohim or Baal or any other deity from the hebrew pantheon.

2. To speak His name one would speak His full name: Yahoveha Milchamah El or something like that, which means yhwh god of war.

Peaceniks about in any society, and they are bound to stray from worship of a god of war, esp. after a particularly bad war. So the single god idea was born, and then, over time, He claimed responsibility for more and more of the other deities purviews. Though history, He would clain their rites and customs as well, adopting such pagan traditions as Yuletide and Easter, and even Lupercus (valentines) and Samhain (samhigheen or halloween.)

If you study god with as much dilligence as you do american poltics, and regognize spin for what it is, you'll find that what i'm saying is true.

I think christians would do well to focus their faith on christ, and leave yhwh behind, as with muslims for mohammed and jews for moses.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Until you can produce a motive that explains what Israel had to gain from the attack and Israel’s reaction following the attack, it’s difficult to argue that Israel wanted to attack the US.

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Uh huh. We've been down that road before. I think it dead-ended with your comparing me to Nazis.

Let me turn the tables on you, for argument's sake. If Liberty was an accident, then her survivors lied about seeing reconnaissance flights recognizing them all morning long and all those other details.

1. What do they have to gain by lying?
2. Do you think it would reasonable for me to dismiss whatever you say with, "That's nonsense. Blah blah blah, there was no reason for them to lie."
3. Do you think it would be reasonable for me to then conclude, "You can't give me a reason for them to lie, therefore I assume such a reason doesn't exist"?
4. Do you think it would be reasonable for me to also conclude, "Unless you can give me a motive for them to lie, it is difficult to argue that they lied."

I am curious. The cardinal feature of a hypothesis is that it is falsifiable, that it sets criterion by which it can be proven wrong. Since you call yourself a rational person, is your position falsifiable? What are your criteria for being proven wrong? What are your objective standards for distinguishing motives that make sense, and motives that don't make sense? Because without objective standards, you could just be subjectively deciding that NO motives could ever make sense. I asked these questions before on the other thread, and never got a response.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by canttakesky:

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:
What could possibly be Israels rationale for deliberatly attacking their greatest ally?

---

I've been thinking a lot about this demand for a motive before being willing to say an action was intentional and deliberate.

---

Or you could point out that France not the US was Israel's biggest ally at the time, and prior to 1968 the US consistently refused military aid and equipment and even opposed and threatened Israel during some previous actions.

So unless USS Liberty was a French ship you don't need to come up with a rationale for the Israelis deliberately attacking their greatest ally.

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More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
]

Attacking ones allies happens too often

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_French_Fleet_at_Mers-e
l-Kebir

1297 French sailors were killed and about 350 were wounded.

The British Admiral Somerville was less enthusiastic about the action saying that it was “the biggest political blunder of modern times and will rouse the whole world against us…we all feel thoroughly ashamed…”



" Fighting them at their own game
Murder for freedom the stab in the back
Women and children and cowards attack

Run to the hills run for your lives "

http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/ironmaiden/liveafterdeath.html#12

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