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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
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I know this is "paranoia", but you've linked to and quoted from an Israeli backed, propaganda organization's website:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=CAMERA
Quote:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniont...1e8boston.html
Time for the truth about the Liberty
By Ward Boston Jr.
June 8, 2007
(Link to Boston's 2004 affadavit: http://www.ussliberty.org/bostondeclaration.pdf )
Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry, it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel's June 8, 1967, bombing of the Navy intelligence ship Liberty.
On that sunny, clear day 40 years ago, Israel's combined air and naval forces attacked the Liberty for two hours, inflicting 70 percent casualties. Thirty-four American sailors died, and 172 were injured. The Liberty remained afloat only by the crew's heroic efforts.
Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd – president of the Court of Inquiry – that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”
The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for 40 years. What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel's actions – even when they kill Americans?
Today, survivors of Israel's cruel attack will gather in Washington, D.C., to honor their dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors themselves to testify publicly.
For decades, I have remained silent. I am a military man, and when orders come in from the secretary of defense and president of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to share the truth.
Adm. Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy's official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.
We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.
I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.
I am outraged at the efforts of Israel's apologists to claim this attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”
Adm. Kidd told me that after receiving the president's cover-up orders, he was instructed to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Department of Defense and rewrite portions of the court's findings. He said, “Ward, they're not interested in the facts. It's a political matter, and we cannot talk about it.” We were to “put a lid on it” and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.
I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand-correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and including in the original transcript, is now missing.
I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel – even when it kills Americans – in the halls of Congress?
Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink “the American ship.”
Surely uncovering the truth about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more important than protecting Israel. And surely 40 years is long enough to wait.
<i>Boston served as chief counsel to the Navy's Court of Inquiry into the attack on the U.S. Navy intelligence ship Liberty. He also served as a naval aviator in World War II on the carrier Yorktown and as an FBI agent prior to his assignment to the Navy's Judge Advocates General Corps. He is a graduate of the the College of William and Mary School of Law and a resident of Coronado.
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Quote:
http://www.ussliberty.org/helmstext.htm
Richard Helms was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1966-1973.
Israeli authorities subsequently apologized for the accident, but few in Washington could believe that the ship had not been identified as an American naval vessel. Later, an interim intelligence memorandum concluded that the attack was a mistake and "not made in malice against the U.S." When additional evidence was available, more doubt was raised....
... This prompted my Deputy, Admiral Rufus Taylor, to write me his view of the incident. "To me, the picture thus far presents the distinct possibility that the Israelis knew that the Liberty might be their target and attacked anyway, either through confusion in Command and Control or through deliberate disregard of instructions on the part of subordinates."
The day after the attack, President Johnson, bristling with irritation, said to me, "The New York Times put that attack on the Liberty on an inside page. It should have been on the front page!"
I had no role in the board of inquiry that followed, or the board's finding that there could be no doubt that the Israeli's knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty. I have yet to understand why it was felt necessary to attack this ship or who ordered the attack.
http://www.ussliberty.org/rusk.htm
Dean Rusk, Johnson's Secretary of State (in the only known instance where he disagreed with the President) wrote:
....although an Israeli attack on Liberty was far easier to deal with. But I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. Their sustained attack to disable and sink Liberty precluded an assault by accident or some trigger-happy local commander. Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous."
Rusk's memoirs: "As I Saw It" (W.W.Norton, 1990) p388
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If this thread was exclusively about the attack on the USS Liberty, the above statements seem compelling enough to move this discussion to the "politics" forum. |