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Old 06-09-2017, 12:27 AM
 
34,274 posts, read 19,284,172 times
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Theres a excellent book told from many of the survivors points of view. Odds are you could find his name in there as it seems like a familiar part of the book to me.
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Old 06-09-2017, 12:58 AM
 
Location: Old Mother Idaho
29,184 posts, read 22,231,053 times
Reputation: 23813
Quote:
Originally Posted by BentBow View Post
I CIA False Flag. Bay of Tonken event.
This is a total lie. You made it up completely.

The event occurred in the Persian Gulf in the Med, not the Tonkin Gulf in S.E. Asia, and the CIA had nothing to do with the Liberty.

I know because I served on her identical twin sister ship, and was in the service when the Liberty was attacked.

Furthermore, I have corrected you before on this matter. This isn't the first time the Liberty has been a topic here; you and I have both posted to older topics about it before. Persisting in these lies does no good, and it dishonors those who served aboard USS Liberty.



The intelligence the AGTR class ships gathered all went straight to the NSA in Washington D.C. While the CIA may have used some of it, the NSA was the central clearing house for all military intelligence that was gathered by all our military branches.

According to a couple of the Liberty's crew, especially one I knew personally from years before the event, it was nothing but a mistake made during the Israeli 7-Day war. Those guys chalked it up to the fog of war, not a conspiracy.

The Israeli government apologized after the attack, and paid several million in reparations. That's the way nations handle mistakes like this. It's not much, for sure, but it's all that it ever is.

But both the crewmen I talked hated the way they were treated by the Navy after they returned to Norfolk; while they were awarded many medals in recognition for their incredible service in the best naval traditions of saving the ship, they thought that they should have all gotten a much better ceremony than the one they got. It was conducted in a remote corner of the old amphibious base, far away from the main base in Norfolk.

The Pentagon and President Johnson wanted it hushed up to avoid a fight with Israel over the incident, so both got what they wanted. It was all very quietly done, and the Liberty, which could have been made seaworthy again, was scrapped in Hawaii instead.

The entire intelligence fleet followed her a few years later to the scrapyard. I've always felt the officers and crew deserved much more public recognition than they got, and the survivors are still pretty bitter about their treatment, but there was no conspiracy.

So- pay some honor to the men of the USS Liberty. They deserved all the recognition they can get. By all right, the Liberty should have sunk, but her officers and crew saved her in the very finest traditions of their service.

But don't try to make some cheap conspiracy out of a tragedy. Innocents die in wars. Respect them, and do not use them for your claptrap in the future.
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:10 AM
 
6,538 posts, read 6,693,329 times
Reputation: 8706
Quote:
Originally Posted by banjomike View Post
This is a total lie. You made it up completely.

The event occurred in the Persian Gulf in the Med, not the Tonkin Gulf in S.E. Asia, and the CIA had nothing to do with the Liberty.

I know because I served on her identical twin sister ship, and was in the service when the Liberty was attacked.

Furthermore, I have corrected you before on this matter. This isn't the first time the Liberty has been a topic here; you and I have both posted to older topics about it before. Persisting in these lies does no good, and it dishonors those who served aboard USS Liberty.



The intelligence the AGTR class ships gathered all went straight to the NSA in Washington D.C. While the CIA may have used some of it, the NSA was the central clearing house for all military intelligence that was gathered by all our military branches.

According to a couple of the Liberty's crew, especially one I knew personally from years before the event, it was nothing but a mistake made during the Israeli 7-Day war. Those guys chalked it up to the fog of war, not a conspiracy.

The Israeli government apologized after the attack, and paid several million in reparations. That's the way nations handle mistakes like this. It's not much, for sure, but it's all that it ever is.

But both the crewmen I talked hated the way they were treated by the Navy after they returned to Norfolk; while they were awarded many medals in recognition for their incredible service in the best naval traditions of saving the ship, they thought that they should have all gotten a much better ceremony than the one they got. It was conducted in a remote corner of the old amphibious base, far away from the main base in Norfolk.

The Pentagon and President Johnson wanted it hushed up to avoid a fight with Israel over the incident, so both got what they wanted. It was all very quietly done, and the Liberty, which could have been made seaworthy again, was scrapped in Hawaii instead.

The entire intelligence fleet followed her a few years later to the scrapyard. I've always felt the officers and crew deserved much more public recognition than they got, and the survivors are still pretty bitter about their treatment, but there was no conspiracy.

So- pay some honor to the men of the USS Liberty. They deserved all the recognition they can get. By all right, the Liberty should have sunk, but her officers and crew saved her in the very finest traditions of their service.

But don't try to make some cheap conspiracy out of a tragedy. Innocents die in wars. Respect them, and do not use them for your claptrap in the future.
Thanks for posting this. This was before my time & until recently I did not know much about this. What amazes me is how many very well know people at that time came down on both sides of this issue. I still don't know what to make of this, to be honest. From my limited reading on this I think most of the men on the ship believe that they were attacked on purpose ? Is that correct ?

Last edited by Brave Stranger; 06-09-2017 at 01:25 AM..
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:57 AM
 
783 posts, read 573,110 times
Reputation: 2068
Quote:
Originally Posted by banjomike View Post
This is a total lie. You made it up completely.

The event occurred in the Persian Gulf in the Med, not the Tonkin Gulf in S.E. Asia, and the CIA had nothing to do with the Liberty.

I know because I served on her identical twin sister ship, and was in the service when the Liberty was attacked.

Furthermore, I have corrected you before on this matter. This isn't the first time the Liberty has been a topic here; you and I have both posted to older topics about it before. Persisting in these lies does no good, and it dishonors those who served aboard USS Liberty.



The intelligence the AGTR class ships gathered all went straight to the NSA in Washington D.C. While the CIA may have used some of it, the NSA was the central clearing house for all military intelligence that was gathered by all our military branches.

According to a couple of the Liberty's crew, especially one I knew personally from years before the event, it was nothing but a mistake made during the Israeli 7-Day war. Those guys chalked it up to the fog of war, not a conspiracy.

The Israeli government apologized after the attack, and paid several million in reparations. That's the way nations handle mistakes like this. It's not much, for sure, but it's all that it ever is.

But both the crewmen I talked hated the way they were treated by the Navy after they returned to Norfolk; while they were awarded many medals in recognition for their incredible service in the best naval traditions of saving the ship, they thought that they should have all gotten a much better ceremony than the one they got. It was conducted in a remote corner of the old amphibious base, far away from the main base in Norfolk.

The Pentagon and President Johnson wanted it hushed up to avoid a fight with Israel over the incident, so both got what they wanted. It was all very quietly done, and the Liberty, which could have been made seaworthy again, was scrapped in Hawaii instead.

The entire intelligence fleet followed her a few years later to the scrapyard. I've always felt the officers and crew deserved much more public recognition than they got, and the survivors are still pretty bitter about their treatment, but there was no conspiracy.

So- pay some honor to the men of the USS Liberty. They deserved all the recognition they can get. By all right, the Liberty should have sunk, but her officers and crew saved her in the very finest traditions of their service.

But don't try to make some cheap conspiracy out of a tragedy. Innocents die in wars. Respect them, and do not use them for your claptrap in the future.
You have officially closed this thread.
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Old 06-09-2017, 02:42 AM
 
Location: Old Mother Idaho
29,184 posts, read 22,231,053 times
Reputation: 23813
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Stranger View Post
Thanks for posting this. This was before my time & until recently I did not know much about this. What amazes me is how many very well know people at that time came down on both sides of this issue. I still don't know what to make of this, to be honest. From my limited reading on this I think most of the men on the ship believe that they were attacked on purpose ? Is that correct ?
Yes. The attack was intentional, but was a mistake from the beginning.

The Israeli government tried to explain the attack away with a claim the fighter pilots believed they were attacking an Egyptian freighter that was supposed to be in the area for espionage purposes.

But the picture they presented of the suspected Egyptian ship looked nothing at all like USS Liberty. The biggest and most obvious visual difference was the pictured ship had a hull painted black instead of the Navy's haze gray. All the AGTR fleet had a very singular appearance; they all carried big transmitters on an aft deck house that looked like huge radar dishes, and their many masts bristled with antennas of all kinds.

I'be always believed the Israeli tactical communications were next to non-existent during the 7-Day war. During the fierce land battles that went on, there were many accounts of Israeli units accidentally firing on each other, and of tank groups mistakenly chasing each other around in the Sinai.

It is probable that some of their main communication stations were knocked out in the first hours of the war, when the Arab allies who attacked from 3 sides came very close to wiping out the Israeli army before it could become organized. The attack was a complete surprise, very similar to our Pearl Harbor.

I've always believed that the hush-up came because neither the U.S. nor Israel wanted to show just how weak the Israel's communications ability really was. Doing so would invite their enemies to re-group and launch another massive attack right away.
Israel came very close to defeat in the 2nd day of the war, and they committed everything they had to it. A second massed attack, with better planning that used their weak communications to better advantage, could have destroyed the nation.

So no one here really questioned their excuse. The United States neither wanted to become entrapped in the fight, nor did we want to see Israel fall into the hands of their Arab enemies.

Things were different 50 years ago. The outcome of the 7-Day war really changed everything afterward. The United States became allies with some of the nations that attacked Israel, and the war ended up creating a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, it's most dangerous foe.

More than anything else, the war gave Israel the reputation of being a mighty giant killer, and that stopped the future wars that likely would have followed. It was the last time Israel ever has fought with it's Arab neighbors.

The Liberty had been on station, just off the coast, for some time. But with no countermanding orders from higher up, it's always been easy for me to see why some young trigger-happy hotshots who wanted to join the fight would shoot first and ask questions later.

And the Liberty received no orders to move well away, out to sea, to avoid a possible accidental attack. The U.S. military was caught off-guard even more than the Israeli military was. An order was eventually given, but by then, the Lib was already shot to pieces and was limping back to Hawaii, shadowed by a squadron of our jets and awaiting some sea-going tugs to help pull her home.

I saw her once, briefly. By all rights, she should have sunk. She was hit by 2 torpedoes midships, a bomb took out the main engine compartment, and there was very little left of the bridge.

What makes her survival even more notable was her crew were mostly what would be called clerks. All the intelligence guys spent their days typing in the secure spaces of the ship's converted cargo bay. The Liberty wasn't a fighting ship of the line. She was a converted freighter, part of the supply Navy that almost never sees combat.

We all got a lot of training on damage control, because we were always out there alone, in the farthest reaches on the planet. At one time, my ship was the only American vessel in the Indian Ocean.

But clerks aren't shipfitters or damage control specialists. In my mind, their efforts were all extremely heroic. That our nation failed to show them full honors and respect for that has always really bothered me.

But what bothers me even more is every year, some half-baked looney conspiracy over the Liberty always pops up alongside the anniversary of the attack. To me, that does a much mis-service to that crew as anything else.

Men die at sea from all kinds of things; I saw a couple drown myself. But making it a conspiracy does nothing to respect those who survived, and many are still living. They, and the memories of those who died, deserve a better remembrance than some BS theory that makes them nothing but pawns in mind games.

The guys I knew were all real flesh and blood, who lived and died in service of their nation. I could have ended up on the Lib myself, so it's all very personal to me.
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Old 06-09-2017, 02:50 AM
 
6,538 posts, read 6,693,329 times
Reputation: 8706
Quote:
Originally Posted by banjomike View Post
Yes. The attack was intentional, but was a mistake from the beginning.

The Israeli government tried to explain the attack away with a claim the fighter pilots believed they were attacking an Egyptian freighter that was supposed to be in the area for espionage purposes.

But the picture they presented of the suspected Egyptian ship looked nothing at all like USS Liberty. The biggest and most obvious visual difference was the pictured ship had a hull painted black instead of the Navy's haze gray. All the AGTR fleet had a very singular appearance; they all carried big transmitters on an aft deck house that looked like huge radar dishes, and their many masts bristled with antennas of all kinds.

I'be always believed the Israeli tactical communications were next to non-existent during the 7-Day war. During the fierce land battles that went on, there were many accounts of Israeli units accidentally firing on each other, and of tank groups mistakenly chasing each other around in the Sinai.

It is probable that some of their main communication stations were knocked out in the first hours of the war, when the Arab allies who attacked from 3 sides came very close to wiping out the Israeli army before it could become organized. The attack was a complete surprise, very similar to our Pearl Harbor.

I've always believed that the hush-up came because neither the U.S. nor Israel wanted to show just how weak the Israel's communications ability really was. Doing so would invite their enemies to re-group and launch another massive attack right away.
Israel came very close to defeat in the 2nd day of the war, and they committed everything they had to it. A second massed attack, with better planning that used their weak communications to better advantage, could have destroyed the nation.

So no one here really questioned their excuse. The United States neither wanted to become entrapped in the fight, nor did we want to see Israel fall into the hands of their Arab enemies.

Things were different 50 years ago. The outcome of the 7-Day war really changed everything afterward. The United States became allies with some of the nations that attacked Israel, and the war ended up creating a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, it's most dangerous foe.

More than anything else, the war gave Israel the reputation of being a mighty giant killer, and that stopped the future wars that likely would have followed. It was the last time Israel ever has fought with it's Arab neighbors.

The Liberty had been on station, just off the coast, for some time. But with no countermanding orders from higher up, it's always been easy for me to see why some young trigger-happy hotshots who wanted to join the fight would shoot first and ask questions later.

And the Liberty received no orders to move well away, out to sea, to avoid a possible accidental attack. The U.S. military was caught off-guard even more than the Israeli military was. An order was eventually given, but by then, the Lib was already shot to pieces and was limping back to Hawaii, shadowed by a squadron of our jets and awaiting some sea-going tugs to help pull her home.

I saw her once, briefly. By all rights, she should have sunk. She was hit by 2 torpedoes midships, a bomb took out the main engine compartment, and there was very little left of the bridge.

What makes her survival even more notable was her crew were mostly what would be called clerks. All the intelligence guys spent their days typing in the secure spaces of the ship's converted cargo bay. The Liberty wasn't a fighting ship of the line. She was a converted freighter, part of the supply Navy that almost never sees combat.

We all got a lot of training on damage control, because we were always out there alone, in the farthest reaches on the planet. At one time, my ship was the only American vessel in the Indian Ocean.

But clerks aren't shipfitters or damage control specialists. In my mind, their efforts were all extremely heroic. That our nation failed to show them full honors and respect for that has always really bothered me.
Thanks
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Old 06-09-2017, 07:19 AM
 
Location: Del Rio, TN
39,809 posts, read 26,373,680 times
Reputation: 25699
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pruzhany View Post
I guess it's that time of year when anything positive occurs related to Israel, someone has to create a negative thread to counter it.

Since we've covered this before, let's read up on what we covered already:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/polit...ty-thread.html

http://www.city-data.com/forum/polit...el-friend.html

http://www.city-data.com/forum/polit...s-liberty.html
In before someone...blames Trump.
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Old 06-09-2017, 11:51 AM
 
Location: West Los Angeles and Rancho Palos Verdes
13,577 posts, read 15,559,560 times
Reputation: 14041
There are a significant number of survivors who believe the attack was intentional, even if initially it was not. In other words, the subsequent attacks including the one from the helicopter gunship were intended to assure there were no survivors who could bear witness by spraying the deck and life rafts with machine gun fire.
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Old 06-09-2017, 12:54 PM
 
Location: Old Mother Idaho
29,184 posts, read 22,231,053 times
Reputation: 23813
Quote:
Originally Posted by Exitus Acta Probat View Post
There are a significant number of survivors who believe the attack was intentional, even if initially it was not. In other words, the subsequent attacks including the one from the helicopter gunship were intended to assure there were no survivors who could bear witness by spraying the deck and life rafts with machine gun fire.
For sure. The Israelis, no matter what their motivation may have been, were intent on sinking the ship. In war, a ship's crew faces death as a matter of course.

The old honor among sea warriors, who fought ship against ship, not crew against crew, ended in World War I. Little mercy to the survivors of a sea battle has been shown since.
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:15 PM
 
Location: Texas
37,940 posts, read 17,778,661 times
Reputation: 10366
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar View Post
Do you even know what a false flag means?
Of course I do. I just gave an example which was the USS Liberty.

Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar View Post
Let me help:
There was no covert operation there, Israel attacked one of our vessels. There was no claim that someone else did other then some confusion initially that Russia might have, nor anything meant to give us a reason to involve ourselves in anything.

What was it? Well that varies. Some say it was a attempt by Israel to hide some of their activities, other argue that they misidentified the vessel.

Neither theory is about a false flag operation. No one has claimed anyone other then Israel did it. While LBJ thought initially it was the Russians, that was rapidly sorted out, and it was made clear that it was Israel.

Wheres the false flag?
They did not "misidentify" the vessel that was flying the American flag and at least one Israeli pilot has come out and said he knew it was an American ship. Our planes were told by LBJ to stand down and not stop the attack.

What you just said is garbage and is an insult to the Americans who died and lived through it.
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