So, when will Israel be attacking Iran's Nuclear Plants then?

[Zevico]

So what you're saying is that we have to believe that the IDF back then was even more incompetent back then, than last year when it got it's ass handed to it on a plate by Hezbollah!!?

No, that's not what he's saying. The AIF did their job fairly well back then, though I'm definitely not an expert on the issue. His point IS that the Air Force--competent or not--was probably overstrained by the Six Day War despite Israel's control of the skies after the first day of the war. Israel simply wasn't the regional power it is today. It was still a weak country economically and in terms of its population size. It could barely handle a short war and would almost be inevitably defeated during a long one. So no, I don't think he's saying it's incompetent. He's saying it was far weaker. While I haven't read the book or researched the USS Liberty incident in detail, it doesn't strike me as unlikely that IAF pilots would be unable to identify enemy naval targets. Ships are -designed- to be hard to notice and identify
. If you read up on the war you'll probably see that even though the IDF was a determined fighting force, it faced some equipment shortages and for some time likely did not have their training up to scratch in certain areas. Obviously this doesn't mean that IAF pilots found themsleves in the same position. But the fact that the IDF was a competent fighting force stemmed from the fact that it had was an experienced fighting force that fought in multiple wars prior to '67--56', 48', WWII (as volunteers in the British Army, hint hint), and skirmishes with Arab militias. Israel had no Air Force to speak of in 48'. I can't remember whether it had one in 56'. But even so, I think you can see that there was at the time a clear difference in experience--and consequently comeptence--between the IDF and the IAF. Apart from that, I don't see where you found any reason to doubt lotm's word. I don't doubt yours even if I do disagree with you.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Zevico though I'm definitely not an expert on the issue...

While I haven't read the book or researched the USS Liberty incident in detail...

I don't see where you found any reason to doubt lotm's word...

I suggest you go away like a good little boy and do some research, because I find it odd in the extreme that someone take sides in an argument without having read up on the subject...

I even provided you with a nice little link in the previous post...

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
I suggest reading Michael Oren "The Six Day War" for a more accurate view of the Johnsons admin view of Israel...

And Oren provides an excellent and detailed explanation of what happened wrt The Liberty...

WHO IS MICHAEL OREN...

Oren, however, is a reserve officer and war veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces as well as a former advisor to the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin -- who was Army chief of staff at the time the Liberty was attacked. He now works for a small right wing, pro-Benjamin Netanyahu Israeli think tank in Jerusalem, the Shalem Center. It is run by its founder, Yoram Hazony, one of former Prime Minister Netanyahu's closest aides (he also ghost wrote a book by him). During the race for prime minister, the political party of Ehud Barak even accused the center of illegally funneling money to Netanyahu -- a charge denied by the center. The Israeli Education Ministry has called the center "a research institute whose leanings are extreme right-wing and even fascistic."

The principal mission of the center, where Mr. Oren is a senior fellow, is the cause of extreme Jewish nationalism -- Israel for the Jews -- i.e. apartheid. That is hardly surprising given that the center's intellectual guru, Yoram Hazony, is an admitted admirer of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. He is the racist, fanatic founder of the violent Jewish Defense League in the U.S. and the rabid anti-Arab Kach movement in Israel, which is now outlawed there and listed as a terrorist group in the U.S. In 1984 Kahane was elected to the Israeli Knesset on a platform calling for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.

Nice one LotM, nice one. Showing your true colours...

http://www.shalem.org.il/

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
And Oren provides an excellent and detailed explanation of what happened wrt The Liberty. The short answer is that what happened has less to do with the Mobius kind of troll - its more in line with the typical KH "Israelis arent supermen" troll. In particular pilots whove been flying far too many missions in support of a quick victory in Sinai, whove had little sleep, who arent well trained in IDing naval targets, and some related incompetence on Israels part.

And neo-Nazis provide a really "great" white wash about how no one was really murdered in the camps. It seems plausible too until you actually do a modicum of research.

The Liberty was deliberately set upon even though it was flying a U.S. flag the size of an elephant. There is no way those pilots and the torpedo boats couldn't have seen it. And they kept attacking.

[lord of the mark]

if you actually read Orens friggin book you will see he is NOT an apologist for everything Israel did - among other things he makes it clear Nasser was reluctant to go to war, and some Israeli pols were eager for war. Its a very balanced, well researched book, and AFAIK has gotten quite good reviews from the mainstream press. Moby doesnt even cite where his slam comes from.

His book won an award as History Book of the Year from the LA Times, that noted Neo-nazi likudnik publication, and he is a contributing editor at the New Republic, another noted neo-Nazi rag.

from Amazon, selected reviews:

Fouad Ajami, on NPR's The Connection
"There have been many books written on the Six Day War, none breaks new ground like this magnificent book does."

Review
POWERFUL . . . A HIGHLY READABLE, EVEN GRIPPING ACCOUNT OF THE 1967 CONFLICT . . . [Oren] has woven a seamless narrative out of a staggering variety of diplomatic and military strands.?
The New York Times

WITH A REMARKABLY ASSURED STYLE, OREN ELUCIDATES NEARLY EVERY ASPECT OF THE CONFLICT . . . Oren's [book] will remain the authoritative chronicle of the war. His achievement as a writer and a historian is awesome.
The Atlantic Monthly

THIS IS NOT ONLY THE BEST BOOK SO FAR WRITTEN ON THE SIX-DAY WAR, IT IS LIKELY TO REMAIN THE BEST.
The Washington Post Book World


[In] Michael Oren?s richly detailed and lucid account, the familiar story is thrilling once again. . . . What makes this book important is the breadth and depth of the research.?
The New York Times Book Review

A FIRST-RATE NEW ACCOUNT OF THE CONFLICT.?
The Washington Post

So lets see, the NYT, the Wapo, Atlantic Monthly and Fouad Ajami. A stunning string of ultra-Likud supporters.



heres part of the review from the Guardian, that noted right wing rag:
"Michael Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, deserves credit for producing the most detailed, the most comprehensive and by far the best-documented history that we have on this short but fateful war. The book includes chapters on the context, the countdown, and the aftermath of the conflict. But the bulk of the book is a day-by day, almost blow-by-blow account of the war itself. The description of military operations on the various fronts is accompanied by accounts of the political crises in the capitals of the belligerents, the role played by the superpowers, and the diplomatic moves to arrange a cease-fire at the United Nations in New York. Throughout the book, Oren uses the full panoply of sources in four European languages, Hebrew and Arabic. He is one of the first writers to take advantage of the thousands of official documents that were recently declassified under the 30-year rule. The products of this prodigious archival research, and of the interviews that Oren conducted with about 60 policy-makers, are used to very good effect. The result is a fast-moving and action-packed narrative that sheds a great deal of new light on all the major participants in the war and on the conflict and cooperation between them. "

[lord of the mark]

"The Shalem Center has partnered with the Prague Security Studies Institute, the Fundacion para el Analisis y los Estudios Sociales in Madrid, and NATO in organizing the fourth international conference of the Program of Atlantic Security Studies. The conference, which will take place in Prague on Spring 2007, will feature Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, Jose Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain, and Natan Sharansky, who is currently serving in Israel's 17th Knesset and is on leave from his post as a Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center."


So everyone associated with the center is to be disbelieved on that basis. That would include NATO and Vaclav Havel. Well Im sure that Guev doesnt take much account of the views of Havel, and perphaps Moby doesnt either, reasonable people here will see that this center, while it leans right, is a center of serious scholarship, and that Orens book should not be ignored because of his affiliation there.

[lord of the mark]

http://azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=143

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


WHO IS MICHAEL OREN...

Nice one LotM, nice one. Showing your true colours...

http://www.shalem.org.il/

@ James Bamford.

He's an idiot who has an agenda and an interesting way with facts not letting him confuse him.

From the NYT review of his book about the NSA, which devoted a whole chapter to the USS liberty claims.

Where ''Body of Secrets'' is weakest, I think, is in its account of the most horrific incident in the N.S.A.'s history, the assault on the spy ship Liberty a few miles off the Sinai peninsula during the 1967 Middle East war. On orders from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the N.S.A. had sent the Liberty into the war zone to collect intelligence on the presence of Soviet troops and weapons in Egypt. On the afternoon of June 8, 1967, the Liberty was attacked by Israeli forces; 34 Americans were killed, 171 wounded. Was it, as Israel maintained, a ''tragic accident''? Or was it, as conspiracy theorists and some of the ship's survivors insist, a coldblooded and deliberate action by the Israelis in order to eliminate evidence of damaging information the Liberty had intercepted?

Rather too credulously, Bamford sides with the conspiracy theorists. He argues that the Israelis were attempting to cover up a gruesome mass murder by Israeli soldiers of some 400 Egyptian P.O.W.'s at the Sinai town of El Arish. Israel, Bamford claims, acted because it was convinced that the N.S.A. ship was recording intelligence on this massacre. ''Israeli soldiers were butchering civilians and bound prisoners by the hundreds,'' he writes, ''a fact that the entire Israeli Army leadership knew about and condoned.'' He charges, too, that the White House and Congress ''covered up'' the facts of the attack. But is it really possible that such an explosive secret could have been kept under wraps for so long by the Johnson administration, the United States Congress and all of the famously fractious Israeli Army leadership?

And what serious evidence is there that a massacre of 400 Egyptians really took place? Bamford's own proof seems rather slender. He cites, for instance, the eyewitness testimony of an Israeli journalist, Gabi Bron. Bamford writes: ''Bron saw about 150 Egyptian P.O.W.'s sitting on the ground, crowded together with their hands held at the backs of their necks. 'The Egyptian prisoners of war were ordered to dig pits and then army police shot them to death,' Bron said.'' The implication here is that 150 Egyptians were slaughtered. Yet the journalist's full account actually states, ''I saw five prisoners killed this way'' -- a brutal war crime if true, yes, but of quite a different magnitude.

It hardly seems plausible that Israel would deliberately attack an American ship, killing dozens of American sailors, risking a confrontation with a superpower and its only ally -- in short, perpetrating one massacre in order to cover up another. Perhaps Bamford's analysis has been skewed by his palpable distaste for the Israeli state: ''Throughout its history, Israel has hidden its abominable human rights record behind pious religious claims,'' he writes. ''Critics are regularly silenced with outrageous charges of anti-Semitism.'' And: ''No one in the weak-kneed House and Senate wanted to offend powerful pro-Israel groups and lose their fat campaign contributions.''

[Sirotnikov]

Another good example of Bamford's nonsense, is his totally dreamed up account of a meeting between pentagon officials and Iranian agents on 2001, published in the Rolling Stone.

the "facts" are so poorly invented that this silly mistake happens:

But in 2001, soon after he arrived at the Pentagon, Ledeen once again met with Ghorbanifar. This time, instead of selling missiles to the Iranian regime, the two men were exploring how best to topple it.

[...]

When Ghorbanifar called Ledeen in the fall of 2001, he claimed, as he often does, to have explosive intelligence that was vital to U.S. interests. "There are Iranians who have firsthand information about Iranian plans to kill Americans in Afghanistan," he told Ledeen. "Does anyone want to hear about it?"

[...]

The Pentagon operatives and the men from Iran sat at a dining-room table strewn with demitasse cups of blackish coffee, ashtrays littered with crushed cigarette butts and detailed maps of Iran, Iraq and Syria. "They gave us information about the location and plans of Iranian terrorists who were going to kill Americans," Ledeen says.

[...]

The men then turned their attention to their larger goal: regime change in Iran. Ghorbanifar suggested funding the overthrow of the Iranian government using hundreds of millions of dollars in cash supposedly hidden by Saddam Hussein. He even hinted that Saddam was hiding in Iran.

Ledeen, Franklin and Rhode were taking a page from Feith's playbook on Iraq: They needed a front group of exiles and dissidents to call for the overthrow of Iran. According to sources familiar with the meeting, the Americans discussed joining forces with the Mujahedin-e Khalq, an anti-Iranian guerrilla army operating out of Iraq.

Ho wait...

look at that blooper....

A meeting in fall 2001 discusses the playbook on Iraq? And Saddam is hiding in Iran? How odd... I was sure Saddam was actually ruling Iraq... you know - until march 2003.

[Zevico]

I suggest you go away like a good little boy and do some research, because I find it odd in the extreme that someone take sides in an argument without having read up on the subject...

The fact that my sympathies lie with lotm does not mean that I agree with him about what happened. As I said, I haven't looked into it. Maybe I will someday, and if I do I wouldn't go past agreeing with you regarding this incident or checking sources that say the act was intentional. I'm sure that the state of Israel is as willing to commit morally unsavoury acts as much as any other Western democracy and I would never blindly support any of its actions.
Regardless, all I was doing was was trying to clarify what lotm said because I thought that you had misunderstood it. My point was that you shouldn't just assume he was lying because his point of view differs from your own, that's all.

[MOBIUS]

Israelis 'rehearse Iran attack'

Israel has carried out an exercise that appears to have been a rehearsal for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, US officials have told the New York Times.

More than 100 Israeli fighter jets took part in manoeuvres over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece in the first week of June, US officials said.

Iran insists its programme is peaceful, but Israel sees Iran's development of the technology as a serious threat.

Tehran is defying a demand from the UN that it stop the enrichment of uranium.

The UN Security Council approved a third round of sanctions against Iran over the issue in March 2008.

The Israeli exercise, it seems, was designed to send a message to Tehran that Israel has the power and will to attack if it thought Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon, the BBC's Jeremy Bowen reports.

None of what has been said and done so far means an attack on Iran is coming and talk of one faded out after US intelligence reported at the end of 2007 that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons programme, he notes.

But now it is back and that is significant, our Middle East Editor says.

Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, said an attack would put Iran on a "crash course" to building nuclear weapons.

"A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible - it would turn the region into a fireball," he told Al Arabiya television in an interview.

"It would make me unable to continue my work," he said.

'Signals'

Several US officials briefing the New York Times said the exercise was intended to demonstrate the seriousness of Israel's concern over Iran's nuclear activities, and its willingness to act unilaterally.

"They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," a Pentagon official is quoted as saying by the newspaper.

"There's a lot of signalling going on at different levels."

The exercise involved Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots, the newspaper reported.

The helicopters and refuelling tankers flew more than 1,400km (870 miles), roughly the distance between Israel and Iran's main uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

The New York Times reported that Israeli officials declined to discuss the details of the exercise.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said the air force "regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel".

The US state department would not comment on the Israeli exercise.

A spokesperson said the US was focused on making diplomacy work with Iran but insisted that all options were still on the table, echoing remarks made recently by President George W Bush.

Diplomats in Washington described the exercise as muscle-flexing, a message that Israel would be ready to take unilateral action against Iran if needed.

But they add that if Israel ever decides to strike, there will be little advance warning - just like when it targeted a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria last September and Iraq's nuclear plant in Osirak in 1981.

Our Middle East editor adds that, at the UN, Russia and others believe attacking Iran would only make matters worse, and talking about it undercuts the diplomacy.

Warnings

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned on 4 June that drastic measures were needed to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

He said Iran must be shown there will be devastating consequences if it did develop such weapons.

Israeli deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz - a former defence minister - said earlier this month that military strikes to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons looked "unavoidable".

In 1981, Israeli jets bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, 30km (18 miles) outside Baghdad.

Israel said it believed the French-built plant was designed to make nuclear weapons that could be used against Israel.

So, before Bush leaves the White House for fear that Obama wins the presidency...?

[Slade Wilson]

RE earlier parts of thread

Its logically inevitable that every nation can obtain nukes, maybe even private companies in the far future. Figuring something reliable out has to be done sometime....fantastic star wars shields are no answer, what if nukes are carried stealthily beneath the shield....

For this i like the current missile defense program being worked on. Small in scale but good for stopping smaller nuclear powers.

There is to me, always the question of putting a nuke on a freighter and sending it to its destination with no attempt at subterfuge....i cant think of any way at all to prevent this besides searching all ships before they leave ports(yet foreign and possible hostile countries ship directly to us)


edit; whats with the necromancy?

[Traianvs]

This is no surprise. I'm actually amazed they are practicing this openly. They could bomb Natanz without all this show of force anyway. So as this is merely meant to impress, do the Israelis try to go more peaceful? Especially since peace talks (on various topics) are being held between all its rivals (Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc...). At least the intention of resolving things peacefully is there; that's what my highly reliable newspaper is telling me anyway

[SlowwHand]

Re: So, when will Israel be attacking Iran's Nuclear Plants then?

Originally posted by MOBIUS


Only a matter of time I say...

The sooner, the better.

[MOBIUS]

So Ahmedinejacket just gave Israel a colossal finger by only standing a few kilometres from its border in Lebanon - talk about the perfect opportunity to take the stunty little c*nt out, if you ask me...

Anyway, on reflection, I'm thinking that the Israelis couldn't take out Iran's nuclear assets even if they tried - they're basically too weak. Not to mention that Iran would give them the mother of all ***** slaps in retaliation...

Looks like Israel is just going to have to get used to the fact that the Iranians will succeed in getting nukes after all...