GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – NO COUNTRY WOULD DARE ATTACK A US NAVAL SHIP!
June 8 should be remembered in America as a ‘day of infamy’.
On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, an unarmed electronic surveillance ship, clearly marked as an American vessel, on duty in international waters , was bombarded by fighter jets and torpedo boats of a foreign power. How dare they!
An act of war surely. Think of the precedent! In 1898, the US battleship Maine mysteriously exploded and sank in the harbour of Havana, Cuba. Spain, the colonial ruler of Cuba, was blamed . ‘Remember the Maine’ howled the American ‘yellow journalism’ of William Randoloph Hearst. President McKinney was pressured to declared war on Spain, a war that became known as the Spanish-American War.
The USS Liberty was stationed in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula at the time of the Six Day War. Israeli fighter jets and torpedo boats fired on the Liberty for 2 hours, killing 34 sailors, wounding 173 others and nearly sinking the ship.The Liberty attempted to radio for assistance, but Israeli aircraft blocked the transmissions. Eventually, the ship was able to make contact with the U.S. carrier Saratoga. Fighter jets were dispatched to defend the Liberty. When word of their deployment reached Washington, however, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered them to return to the Saratoga.
The Liberty didn’t sink. Her commanding officer, Captain William McGonagle was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for saving her. President Johnson, breaking with tradition, refused to award the medal personally, and refused to hold the ceremony at the White House.
Israel admitted attacking the Liberty but claimed that they thought it was an Egyptian ship. President Johnson accepted the Israeli explanation and cancelled investigations. “We will not embarrass an ally” the President said.
|
The surviving crew members were sworn to secrecy. The attack on the USS Liberty has been buried. Not completely buried, at least not while any survivors are still alive. Survivors and other Navy Officers and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, are convinced that intercepted Israeli communications show that it was Israel’s intention to sink the ship, killing all the crew. By flying unmarked planes, the Israelis hoped to blame the attack on Egyptians and thus convince the US to go war with Egypt. Every year the survivors gather to remember and honour their fallen colleagues. They want to tell their story. But Congressmen and women, and mainstream media don’t want to hear. Testimonies by survivors and by Ray McGovern can be found by sitting down at the computer and doing some research. That is how I’ve found the information that I am sharing. For example, The BBC made a documentary in 2002, USS Liberty; Dead in the Water. The Real News, in 2015 produced SURVIVOR OF ISRAEL ATTACT; IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN A MISTAKE , interviewing survivor Sgt. Bryce Lockwood and former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern. |
Why has this story of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty been suppressed? Why is it still suppressed? Why won’t the US Government allow the truth to come out, even now, 50 years later? Why isn’t 08 June remembered as a ‘day of infamy’?
Imagine the repercussions should an American ship be attacked by an Arab country, or Iran or Russia or North Korea or China!
Lois Griffiths is a Palestinian Human Rights Activist
Al Jazeera has a good doco “The Day Israel attacked America”By Memory this one explains why LBJ suppressed details of the attack and officially accepted the premise of mistaken identity
According to the survivors they were threatened with courtmartial and imprisonment if they ever discussed their experiences.They were never stationed together again, sent off to other bases singly.
Why did Israel do this?
Some say as a false flag, blaming Egypt and causing the US to nuke Cairo
US Admiral Thomas Moorer said that the USS Liberty had the ability to intercept radio messages from all sides and would thus become aware of Israeli plans to illegally attack and seize the Golan Heights from Syria.
After the attack on the USS Liberty this indeed came to pass
Anyone who challenged the official mistaken identity narrative was ridiculed as a conspiracy theorist
In the light of all this, was LBJ an agent of a foreign government, and how many members of Congress receive money via lobbyists from the powerful AIPAC, making them also agents of a foreign govt?
I’ve watched that doco, Francesca and it very well presented. It is a must-see piece of investigative journalism: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2014/10/day-israel-attacked-america-20141028144946266462.html
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/USS_Liberty_Incident
“Imagine the repercussions should an American ship be attacked…”
We know already – the Americans largely faked and treacherously misrepresented the Tonkin Gulf Incident. I am sure the Vietnamese have not forgotten the consequences.
A certain element in the US Admin probably admired the Israelis for what they did here..
Didn’t nuclear armed bombers take off to obliterate Egypt, a Russian ally? Nuclear war always hair trigger was averted when it became clear to the US they had been attacked by Israel and the bombers were recalled.
Yes, I’ve read that . They were called back within 3 minutes of dropping their bombs.Egypt at the time was a client state of the USSR
Some historians claim that Washington was in on it from the get go.The only reason they pulled back was they realised that the USS Liberty had in fact managed to fire off a few radio messages received by nearby embassies.The ,Soviets also had listening posts nearby, and informed Washington that the jig was up, they better fall back or Moscow would reveal to the world what they’d been up to
Well, thats the theory
At the same time something panicked the Israeli attackers, and instead of finishing the job and sinking the ship, they also fell back, leaving survivors to eventually tell the tale
Hard to imagine how any one could be so insane as to contemplate a nuclear war
The entire narrative presented by the NZ government to the masses is composed of lies and cover-ups. The lies includes included lies about economics, lies about population, lies about energy, lies about the environment and lies about politics. ‘No one’ knows or cares, even though policies pursued are utterly catastrophic in the long run.
It will be the next generation that will pay the horrendous price that is a natural consequence of all the mendacity that has characterized western politics for decades.
I’ve just found an article about this , on Counterpunch,
June 2, 2017
Infamy at Sea: Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty 50 Years Later
by Jeffrey St. Clair
It asks 2 questions: 1) “How tightly does the Israeli lobby control the Hill? For the first time in history, an attack on an America ship was not subjected to a public investigation by Congress.”
2)”The bigger question is why the US government would participate so enthusiastically in the cover-up of a war crime against its own sailors.”
“Through most of the 1960s, the US congress had imposed a ban on the sale of arms to both Israel and Jordan. But at the time of the Liberty attack, the Pentagon (and its allies in the White House and on the Hill) was seeking to have this proscription overturned. The top brass certainly knew that any evidence of a deliberate attack on a US Navy ship by the IDF would scuttle their plans. So they hushed it up.”
We are hearing so much now about possible Russian influence in American politics, but never a peep about Israeli influence. I hope all daily blog readers have heard of AIPAC
I thought it was extraordinary that against Obama’s wish, Netenyahu was invited to address Congress with a theatrical denunciation of the Iran deal, calling for the deal to be overhauled. He got clamorous approval.
Talk about interfering in soverign countries democracy!