Gustave, you're the one who needs to get a grip. That article provided the facts surrounding the attack on the USS Liberty, as well as possible alternative reasons that is was attacked.
Personally, I think it was attacked on purpose, on the order of someone on the Israeli general staff. I don't believe the decision was made by an Israeli politician.
The attack on the Liberty may share considerable comparisons to the US attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. I can't believe Clinton would be willing to upset his Chinese "buddies" by ordering such an attack. However, I can see some US general, faced with the fact that the Chinese embassy was acting as a retransmission point for Serbian military signals (-signals that were placing the lives of US airmen at risk-) ordering the strike by providing the GPS coordinates to the staff loading targeting data into those JDAMS guided bombs. It could be blamed on the "fog of war" and the politicians would be left to sort it out.
Obviously what the Chinese were doing was an act of aggression and technically outright beligerency that violated their neutrality. And one can only wonder if this broadcast operation was sanctioned by the Chinese leadership in Bejing, or a rogue operation on the part of the Chinese military attache staff in Belgrade (the bomb was a pin-point hit on the Chinese military attache's office at the Embassy), who had always maintained "buddy-buddy" relations with Milosevic's gang.
And the same can be said for the attack on the Liberty. Were I some Israeli general trying to secretly prepare for a military operation aimed at seizing the Golan Heights, and I didn't want the Syrians tipped off, I would have to look at the Liberty as a threat to my operations security. So would I order the attack so as to save the lives of my troops, and leave it to the politicians to work out the apologies?? Quite possibly, I would have.
But if there was a cover up, it was on the part of BOTH SIDES, not just the Israelis. And one day all of these documents dealing with the affair will be declassified so the truth will eventually be known. I can wait.
But it certainly does not reflect a change in stance between the US and Israel. Obviously both sides perceived that their mutual interests lay on the course of better relations and avoiding such "confusion" in the future.
Hawk |
