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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (6122)	1/25/2004 8:04:54 AM
From: rrufff	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20773

That's got to be one of the most ridiculous posts I've seen on SI and certainly not one with any pretense of moderation. I think you need to spend more time watching movies and telling yourself you know how to run the world. Great name - cosmicforce miami.com Posted on Wed, Jul. 09, 2003 Miami judge says tapes back Israeli version of Liberty attack PETER ENAV Associated Press JERUSALEM - Newly declassified transcripts back up the Israeli claim that its military attacked a U.S. spy ship during the 1967 Mideast war by mistake, a Florida judge who has been investigating the case for 16 years said Wednesday. Israel has always maintained that it thought the USS Liberty was an Egyptian military supply ship when it ordered its forces to attack it on June 8, 1967, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171. But critics charge Israel knew the ship was American. Questions about the case have long dogged U.S.-Israel relations. A. Jay Cristol, a federal bankruptcy judge in Miami, received transcripts of transmissions from two Israeli helicopter pilots, sent to check for survivors after the attack. The pilots referred to the ship as Egyptian and were surprised to discover that it was flying an American flag. The recordings, in Hebrew, were made by a U.S. spy plane hovering over the site. Cristol told The Associated Press that he received the transcripts after submitting a Freedom of Information request to the U.S. National Security Agency, which has been holding the recordings secret for 37 years. After his request was denied, Cristol filed suit in federal court and forced their release. NSA spokesman Patrick Weadon confirmed that the agency had sent Cristol the transcripts. "We provided the tapes as part of the historical record," Weadon said. "The agency takes no official position on what happened to the Liberty." Cristol, who has written a book about the case, said, "The tapes should put an end to 98 percent of the Liberty controversy. They show that both the helicopter pilots and their controller at the Hatzor air force base believed that the Israeli air force had targeted an Egyptian ship." In the NSA summary of incident, which fills in some blanks from the recordings themselves, apparently using other sources, there is direct reference to Israeli confusion over the identity of the stricken ship more than an hour after the attack. "At 1230 GMT two Israeli helicopters, 810 and 815, were dispatched to the area of the incident to check for survivors of an unidentified warship," the summary reads. The transcript of the transmissions then records the air controller telling one of the pilots, "The ship is now identified as Egyptian, you can return home now." The summary continues: "At 1312 GMT, the Israeli helicopter 815 apparently informed Hatzor on a different frequency that it had sighted an American flag on the ship." The transcript records the air controller telling the pilot, "We request that you make another pass and check once more if this is really an American flag." Cristol provided the NSA summary and the full transcripts of the pilot and tower recordings to the AP. Israel has long maintained that the attack on the Liberty was the result of a tragic mistake during the heat of battle. Israel was at war with Egypt, Syria and Jordan at the time. An Israeli commission of inquiry concluded that the Israeli air force believed that the targeted ship was an Egyptian cargo vessel ferrying supplies to Egyptian troops fighting Israeli forces. However, some of the Liberty's survivors and some officials in the U.S. defense establishment have rejected this view, contending that Israel deliberately targeted the ship to keep the United States from learning that Israel was planning to attack Syria as part of its strategy during the war. "Body of Secrets," a 2001 book by best-selling author James Bamford, claimed that Israel struck the Liberty because it suspected the ship had monitored evidence of Israeli army atrocities against Palestinian prisoners. Israel has denied the charges. The Israeli daily Haaretz, which first reported the disclosures in its Wednesday edition, quoted Cristol as saying that the tape transcripts were the last classified intelligence about the Liberty.

To: cosmicforce who wrote (6122)	1/25/2004 12:42:15 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Excuse me but there are major logic problems with your theory. Egypt's air force was destroyed on the first day of the war. And it was losing the war in the Sinai. Thus it did not have the means to hit Israel's nuclear site(s). Now the USSR which was backing Egypt (with conventional arms only) did. Of course, this would mean direct Soviet intervention in the war. And if Israel were worried about that, that would cause Israel to be even more dependent on alliance with the US. Because the US is the only country which could be a restraining influence on the USSR. Israel would not want to keep the threat of Soviet involvement secret from the US - they would want the US to know. Because logic tells you the US is unlikely to have stood by and watched while the Soviet Union won a major Cold War victory with the Middle East falling into Soviet hands. Not something the US would have stood by and allowed to happen during the Cold War. So much for that motive. I would note that throughout the long Cold War, the USSR never supplied nukes to any of its allies. Even in the case of Cuba where they installed nuclear missiles, those remained under direct Soviet control. We are very lucky they were cautious in this regard. So the idea that the USSR would turn over nuclear weapons to Egypt isn't credible. And it isn't credible to think that Israel would want to keep the threat of Soviet direct nuclear involvement secret from the US. Lastly, about your sentence: Remember, Israel was setting their sights on the Suez peninsula and lands beyond for economic, strategic (the canal), historical, religious and cultural reasons - it should be recalled that Israel's Menachem Begin gave back the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty. The value of the Sinai to Israel was and is clearly strategic. Strategic in that it supplied strategic depth - it was a space between Egypt's army and Israel's border. The historical, religious, and cultural reasons - and the canal - proved not important.