Post from ckapsl -

Understood, but I'm a lawyer and I don't give a rat's rear about helping the other side![:D]

Eric The(That'sAJoke,Son)Hun[>]:)]

Predictable BS from Eric:



Israel's fabricated, hand-washing, opinion is so self-serving, it holds NO weight.

Whatever you point to as a U.S. determination absolving Israel will have to be based on carefully picked statements of people like McNamara and Johnson, whose own track record in selling out the U.S. military destroyed their credibility even before that murderous day.


Yeah, like former key members of that government
Admiral Thomas H. Moorer (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff); Dean Rusk, who was Secretary of State; Clark Cliford, Counsel to President Johnson; and Undersecretary of the Navy Paul C. Warnke, to name just a few.


Please include me in this.

(he forgot to mention that the ship was in international waters)
Why?  Give this site a thorough reading:[url] http://208.56.153.48/jim/ussliberty/[/url]
An 'accident' after 8 separate observations by Israeli aircraft, and with intercepts from two aircraft including reports by the Israeli pilots that the ship was American. Told to attack anyway. Oh yeah, an 'accident'that 4 of the 5 ship frequencies were jammed, too.


Only that the ship was prominently flying the U.S. Ensign, that the attacking jets were unmarked, that Egyptian horse-boat Israel claimed to have confused the Liberty with was only 40% the Liberty's size, plus what was mentioned above.



Only a Hun could ignore the lies and inhumanity visited upon these men by Zionist murderers.

It take an ignoramus of monumental proportions to not realize how ending a diatribe with a statement like that saps it of any value. Why not just confess your anti-Semitism and be done with it? If nothing else, we might admire you for your blunt honesty rather than these poor attempts at masking your true beliefs.

Since your blathering response appears directed at me, I'll offer up a couple of rebuttals:

A) Maybe I just missed that portion of the news, but I honestly don't recall any of our "white, Christian neighbors" dancing in the streets or wagging their tongues at TV cameras in celebration over the attack. Look at how the overwhelming majority of those "white, Christian neighbors" did react, with complete shock, horror, rage, and comdemnation. Notice any difference between that and how most of the Arab and Islamic communities around the globe have reacted to this latest attack? Even most of the Arabs and Muslims here in our own damn country that was violated in the worst possible way appear passive in the response.

B) What in the hell does the First or Second Amendment have to do with ANY of this? No matter what the liberals have brainwashed you with, the First Amendment DOES NOT extend any special protect ethnic or religious groups from any form of persecution. In fact, directly contrary to what you implied, it protects free speech and expression including that which may be construed as persecution.

C) The next time you decide to call someone a moron, you'd best take a close look in the mirror and make sure there isn't one staring right back at you.

I wouldn't even admire him for his honesty...IMHO, the antiSemites who keep blathering on about the dangers of "zionism" are not much different than the people who blew up the WTC.

I have one wee problem with your suggestion.  I don't (regardless of what YOU may think of me), believe I'm anti-semitic.  Unfortunately, that label is often applied by bigots to people who dare to speak out against abuses or crimes by the Israeli government, or even to people who merely criticize Israeli policies.

If I don't receive your admiration for agreeing with your unfounded accusation, so be it.  It's nothing for me to fret about.

Confession?  Here's one: I'm against murderers, regardless of which faith they may twist to try to justify their slaughter.

There - Now my true belief is finally unmasked.
How did I hide this before?

It's OK if you have no real information in response to my points about what Eric said.
If the best you can come up with is to complain that you think it's a "diatribe", I'm quite pleased.

As annoyed as I get with Eric's seeming inability to believe that Israel could ever do wrong, at least he tends to provide some backup (selective as it may be) for his opinion.

By the way, are the Saudis still giving refuge to Idi Amin?

My wife and I just had a daughter 5 weeks ago. It was a high risk pregnancy, one Dr was so concerned and took such incredible care of her. We had talked and laughed during the visits. I would have to my home anytime, I am a Jew, he is Syrian.
I am tired of people hating each other, the political leaders do enough of it for the world. I would rather take a person for the character that they show.

Post from prk -

So when you say 'McNamara and Johnson' you're referring to the US Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States, during this period (1967), right?

So we really can't even trust our own elected officials and their duly appointed and confirmed cabinet members to 'do the right thing' concerning the USS Liberty situation, but we damn sure insist that Israel better own up to the fact that it purposefully attacked an American warship on the high seas!

It seems to me that the main bitch that the veterans sailors of the USS Liberty must surely have is not against Israel, who at least has the relatively plausible defense of fog of war, but against their own political leaders, against their own military commanders for failing to come to their aid, and against the American Public for permitting the politicians and the military to get away with failing to take any responsibility.

And yet the official government line is that it accepts Israel's position that it was a mistake!
Once again, your bitch should be directed at our government, not Israel's.

International waters in a war zone, to be precise! That's always been admitted, where have you been?

You need to read the USS Liberty site a little better, especially the Israeli position! The sequence of events told from the Israeli point of view contradicts the American view and is just as likely to be factually correct.

Once again read the Israeli version, the pilots denied seeing any flag until later after the attack was concluded!

What difference that the Israeli planes were unmarked, they quickly admitted their actions and their mistakes? They apologized and made reparations.

Lord, how many people do you want to insult here?

[size=4][b]But why use the word 'zionist'? I believe that's the very friggin word Osama Bin-Laden uses to describe Israeli Jews, now isn't it?[/b][/size=4]

I would think you'd want to put a little distance at least between yourself and Bin-Laden? But that's a choice you'll have to make!

If you can manage to bring yourself into such alignment with Osama Bin-Laden and his hatred of Israel, have you also forgiven him of his mass murder of American civilians? If so, surely you could forgive Israel the 34 dead sailors aboard the USS Liberty?

Eric The(Lying,InhumaneSupporterOfBin-Laden'sWorstNightmare!)Hun[>]:)]

Rik, this only makes you appear foolish and narrow-minded, but not for the first time.  You just equated people critical of the Israeli government with mass asassins and terrorists.  Ironic, considering some of the means used to create the State of Israel back in '48-'51.

The day I get your admiration will be the day I wonder if I haven't gone badly wrong somewhere.

For the rest of you:
As I understand it, Semites are an ethnic group, some of which are Jews. On the whole, Jewish folk have been pretty good people, with some exeptions as you will find in any group.

Zionism, has been a movement (going back over 100 years)among some of the Jewish people to create and expand a 'homeland', as currently represented by the government of Israel and its support groups abroad and here in the U.S.  Trouble is, there were a bunch of OTHER people already calling it home.

Regardless of the disinformation often promulgated by the apologists, it is possible to condemn certain actions of the government of Israel without condemning the Jewish people as a whole, or even all the ones living in that country.  

Even within the Jewish people living inside Israel, there are disagreements over government policy and other political issues.

For example, I don't think everybody there believes that houses of Palestinians should be bulldozed and their land taken over by government supported 'settlers'.

I guess opponents of this are antiSemites, too, using the 'logic' of RW and Boomer.

Would they also say that critics of the unparalleled influence Israel has in the U.S. Congress are anti-Semites?

How about simply reporting how much Foreign Aid Israel receives from the U.S., compared to other countries?  Anti-Semitic?  I think not.
 

Whatever bitches they and I may have with the U.S. officials does not diminish the wrongs perpetrated by Israel upon them, it was as salt in their wounds.  Your attempt to distract our attention from the original actors by pointing fingers at the people who failed to exact revenge upon them was a sorry move.  I'd compare it to telling the tenant wrongfully evicted by your own client that its their fault they're on the street, because they had a lousy attorney.  

Once again, you're making a feeble attempt to distract attention from the misdeeds of those you defend, by finding fault with how others reacted (or failed to).  By your 'logic', Michelle's main bitch was [u]not[/u] with OJ, but with the dogs, or Ron Goldberg, or with any one else that didn't save her from being cut up.
Pffft!!!

The more that I think about any group of people in America celebrating the death of thousands of innocent people, the angrier I get.

Isn't cheering the death and carnage a signal that these people are not Americans?

I can forgive the Palestinians, because they are in a frigging war zone, but people of Arab descent living in America I can't forgive.

I've been right here, trying to find an excuse for your convenient omission of the fact of it's position being outside Israeli waters.
While I'm not sure how you define 'war zone', but even in such a zone, willful attacks on non-combatants are flat-out wrong.
AND


As to why Israel would attack the ship of ally, according to  [i]Body of Secrets[/i] by James
Bamford, released this year,(p. 201-202),
at around 9:30 the morning of the attack, Liberty was 13 miles from El Arish and the minaret was visible from the ship.  Though the crew didn't know it at the time, Israeli soldiers were turning the town into a slaughterhouse, systematically butchering prisoners.  

Near the minaret, about 60 Egyptian prisoners were lined up (with their hands tied behind their back) and machine-gunned them.  Another 30 prisoners were shot nearby.

In another incident near the airport, an Israeli journalist witnessed the massacre of 150 Egyptian POW's were shot after being forced to dig pits.

Other background on this incident is in Chapter 7, "Blood", pages 185 through 239

The suggestion is made that the Israelis did not want these war crimes to see the light of day, they knew Liberty was an intelligence ship, and so they tried to sink it and kill any record of the facts, as well as the men on board.  Life rafts were machine-gunned.

This is an excellent book, by the way, even if it gets a little dry in other parts. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Yes, there was a Navy error in where they sent order changes.  That does not excuse willful acts by Israel.

There are problems with the Israeli point of view.
[url]http://208.56.153.48/jim/ussliberty/salans.txt[/url]
In [i]Body of Secrets[/i], it's noted that the Egyptian ship they claim to have mistaken Liberty for was tied to a dock 250 miles away.

So there's no misunderstanding, he's using a metaphor.  The attack did not occur in actual fog.

Only that it is evidence that they were trying to conceal the identity of the attackers, much like criminals use masks or other forms of concealment to avoid getting identified and brought to justice.

Liberty, on the other hand, had a hull number very clearly marked, and the name was also clearly readable.

It's been fun, but my ride's here - just one more thing -
[red]Please clarify -Are you calling me a liar here? Or would you like to state that you meant that to apply to anyone who really is a liar and inhumane supporter of Bin-Laden, and that you did not intend to imply that I'm such a person?[size=4]  PRK[/red][/size=4]

Post from prk -

Not so [i]mein kleine Spitzkopf[/i], in my very first post in this thread I made the following comment regarding the attack on the Liberty:

"What was the Israeli motivation for shelling the US ship? Surely, they could not be certain that deliberately attacking a naval vessel of the United States on the [b]high seas[/b] would not bring about swift and determined retribution from the Americans?"

What does 'high seas' mean to you? Well, quite frankly, I don't give a crap what it means to you, but it's defined in [i]Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary[/i] as:

[b]'the open part of a sea or ocean esp. outside territorial waters.'[/b]

Now, turning to that pile of crap which you refer to as [i]Body of Lies[/i] by James Bamford, let me throw out a review of Mr. Bamford's allegations concerning the USS Liberty -

[b]Reviewing the book for the New York Times on April 29th, Joseph Finder wrote that "Body of Secrets is weakest... in its account of the most horrific incident in the N.S.A.'s history, the assault on the spy ship Liberty a few miles off the Sinai peninsula during the 1967 Middle East war." Finder stated that Bamford chose to side with conspiracy theorists, who claimed that the White House and Congress were part of the cover-up of facts about the attack. "[u]And what serious evidence is there that a massacre of 400 Egyptians really took place?[/u]" Finder asked. "[u]Bamford's own proof seems rather slender[/u]."[/b]

In order for others, not you [b]prk[/b], to fully assess the Israeli position on the attack of the [i]USS Liberty[/i], please go to the following site, which is an [i]Azure Magazine[/i] article by Michael B. Oren, titled '[u]The USS Liberty: Case Closed[/u].'

[url]http://israeliculture.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.shalem.org.il/azure/9%2DOren.htm[/url]

Here is a nice little blurb from the article:

"Common sense would also dictate that the Israelis, in the process of handily defeating three Arab armies, could have easily sunk a single, lightly armed ship if they had wanted to. In such a case, they would not have attacked the Liberty in broad daylight with clearly marked boats and planes - submarines could have done the job - nor would they have ultimately halted their fire and offered the ship assistance."

Now that makes good sense! And regarding the assertions that Israel was busy executing Egyptian prisoners of war -

"Among the more far-fetched theories that have been suggested is the possibility that the Liberty was attacked because it had learned of the Israeli execution of Egyptian POWs; or that it had picked up Israeli attempts to draw Jordan into the war so that Jerusalem might be brought under Israeli control. [u]But no document, American or Israeli, contains any reference to prisoner executions; neither are they mentioned in any Arabic source that has come to light to date[/u]."

This is a very good recitation of the facts from both US and Israeli sources.

Thank you prk, for I would not have found this excellent article without your bringing up the book by James Bamford, [i]Body of Lies[/i].

Eric The(CompletelySatisfied)Hun[>]:)]