Who thinks the USS Liberty incident bears a striking resemblace to the UN post deaths

[Last Conformist]

Re: Who thinks the USS Liberty incident bears a striking resemblace to the UN post de

Originally posted by MOBIUS
204 US servicemen were killed and wounded by repeated IDF strikes while all their radio signals were jammed back in 1967 - Washington whitewashed the whole thing despite a blatant attack on its own servicemen!

http://www.ussliberty.org/report/report.htm

Now the UN outpost.

The similarities are repeated attacks over a prolonged period of many hours by combined arms on surveillance/monitoring assets - followed by a claim from one of the world's most sophisticated fighting forces that 'it was a mistake'

No one in the IDF was ever punished for the USS Liberty atrocity - will any be for the UN atrocity?

The difference is, in '67 it likely was a mistake.

[DinoDoc]

'67 likely wasn't a mistake based on the evidence. 06 likely was.

[Colon™]

Who's to Blame for the U.N. Attack?

While U.N. and Israeli officials trade charges about what caused the deadly incident in South Lebanon, the Israeli military is pointing fingers at each other

By AARON J. KLEIN/JERUSALEM AND NICHOLAS BLANFORD/SOUTH LEBANON

Posted Friday, Jul. 28, 2006
It's not all that surprising that the United Nations and others are trading charges in the wake of the Israeli air strike that killed four U.N. observers in South Lebanon Tuesday. But the finger-pointing is also going on inside the Israeli military over who is in fact responsible for the deadly incident.

According to an Israeli senior military officer, both the Air Force and the Northern Command of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are trying to heap the blame on each other, principally because of a dispute over the accuracy of the data that led to the missile attack. This source says that an army spotter saw Hizballah firing from an area near the U.N. building but locked into the U.N. building by mistake. He then passed the precise coordinates on to the air force control, who relayed the target site to one of the fighter planes circling overhead. But the Northern Command is insisting that it relayed the correct coordinates to the air force, pinpointing suspected Hizballah positions and not the U.N. bunker nearby.

In the maps used by field officers and pilots, according to the source, the U.N. positions in south Lebanon are clearly marked in blue, which makes it harder to understand why the error occurred. It's common, especially when the suspected enemy target is stationary, that a dialogue ensues between the fighter pilot and his commander to double-check that the coordinates are correct. This is especially true in air strikes on Gaza, where the suspected target is often in densely populated areas. In the heat of battle, it's possible that this dialogue never happened, resulting in a tragic mistake.

The four unarmed U.N. observers killed in the incident — from Canada, Austria, Finland and China — were members of the 50-strong Observer Group-Lebanon, part of the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), which has been monitoring the armistice lines along Israel's border since 1948. Their post, which consisted of a three-story whitewashed building with a bomb shelter, was only about 100 yards from a former South Lebanese Army prison that now serves as a Hizballah-run museum. There was no hiding that it was a U.N. post; "U.N." was painted in big black letters on the white walls, and the U.N. flag always flew.

In the days leading up to the deadly strike, there had been several near misses of the U.N. post, all falling within a 300-yard radius, according to an officer of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Then, at around 1:20 p.m. Tuesday, one aerial bomb exploded 300 yards away and the four observers went "ground hog" (UNIFIL's term for going to the bomb shelter). Soon after, according to the UNIFIL officer, UNIFIL contacted the Israeli military to warn them that one of their bombs had fallen close to a U.N. position. Over the next six hours, another 10 aerial bombs exploded between 100 yards and 300 yards from the U.N. post, while four 155mm artillery shells exploded inside the position, causing extensive damage. "We contacted the Israelis every time after one of the bombs fell. We were begging them to stop because it was going to end up in a tragedy. They said they would look into the matter and correct the situation," the UNIFIL officer recalled. Israel, while saying that the accident is under investigation, has not confirmed that it got the warnings.

Regardless of what preceded it, there is no disputing that the position was hit by at least two aerial bombs at 7:20 p.m., killing all four observers. UNIFIL insists there were no reports of Hizballah firing Katyusha rockets from the vicinity of observers' position, and that there was no obvious target for the Israelis that was discernible to UNIFIL. The officer contends that the Israelis did not halt their air strikes because "they don't care. They feel they have more important issues on their mind to hit Hizballah. Everything else is secondary." According to a senior U.N. official in Lebanon, the Israelis used "precision guided missiles," inferring that the air strike was not an accident.

For its part, Israel has vehemently rejected that notion, most prominently floated by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, that the observers were deliberately targeted. "What interest does it serve if Israel targets U.N. servicemen deliberately?" Gideon Meir, a deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry, asked. "What can we gain out of it? Quite the contrary."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1220278,00.html

[Lodi]

Colon, your name reminds me of a little fact. Collin Powell's real name is Collins Powell. But those around him called him Colin because he was just full of it. And it has just stuck with him publically ever since.

[MOBIUS]

Posted for the benefit of Zevico.

Ignorance is no defence!

As we can see, Israel happily attacks anyone that gets in their way - friend (supposedly) or foe!

This ongoing catalogue of atrocities belies a nation whose military is dangerously out of control - hence the question of Israel attacking Iran is not a question of if, but when...

Ahmedinejad is not in a position of real strength just yet as he does have many enemies with Iran, however the moment Israel or the US attempts to pull anything crazy - the entire nation will pull together behind him! And the US will play into the hands of extremist Iran just as they have in Iraq...

[Arrian]

The officer contends that the Israelis did not halt their air strikes because "they don't care. They feel they have more important issues on their mind to hit Hizballah. Everything else is secondary."

Sounds likely to me.

-Arrian

[DinoDoc]

Why has this thread risen from the grave, MOBIUS? Were you working on that post all this time?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
'67 likely wasn't a mistake based on the evidence. 06 likely was.

I can only suggest reading Michael Oren's "The Six Day War" for a full explanation of what caused the accident. I am NOT going to attempt to repeat the discussion here.

[Sirotnikov]

Mobius why don't you go investigate the Liberty incident a bit closer? Say... 10 miles underwater? Chained to its haul?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
Mobius why don't you go investigate the Liberty incident a bit closer? Say... 10 miles underwater? Chained to its haul?

The Liberty didn't sink.

[Sirotnikov]

Puh

So how come we sent helicopters to rescue people?

What happened to it?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
What happened to it?

The IDF flew several recon flights over it. Then came back and started bombing it and then sent in torpedo boats to attack the ship as well claiming it was an Egyptian ship it looked nothing like. Despite the severe damage the ship sustained, the crew was able to keep it afloat and it was able to leave under its own power.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
The IDF flew several recon flights over it. Then came back and started bombing it and then sent in torpedo boats to attack the ship as well claiming it was an Egyptian ship it looked nothing like. Despite the severe damage the ship sustained, the crew was able to keep it afloat and it was able to leave under its own power.

Their first report was that it was moving too fast to be the liberty. The pilots were Air force with limited experience of hitting ships at sea, and they were exhausted. After the first hits, there was too much smoke to see clearly. Theres lots of info from
declassified documents (both Israeli and US) that wasnt originally available.

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

"Yet the Israelis remained highly concerned about threats to their coastline, along which most of the country’s major industrial and population centers were situated. The Egyptian navy outnumbered Israel’s by more than five to one in warships and, in a crisis, could call on the support of some seventy Soviet vessels in the vicinity.14 The failure of the Israeli navy’s attacks on Egyptian and Syrian ports early in the war did little to assuage Israel’s fears. Consequently, the IDF Chief of Staff, Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, informed the U.S. Naval Attaché in Tel Aviv, Cmdr. Ernest Carl Castle, that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal. Unidentified vessels would be sunk, Rabin advised; the United States should either acknowledge its ships in the area or remove them.15 Nonetheless, the Americans provided Israel with no information on the Liberty. The United States had also rejected Israel’s request for a formal naval liaison. On May 31, Avraham Harman, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, had warned Under Secretary of State Eugene V. Rostow that “if war breaks out, we would have no telephone number to call, no code for plane recognition, and no way to get in touch with the U.S. Sixth Fleet.”16

Before dawn on June 8, three days into the war, the Liberty finally reached its destination, barely within international waters north of the Sinai coast. Plying at a speed of five knots between Port Said and Gaza, the Liberty entered a lane rarely used by commercial freighters, which Egypt had declared closed to neutral vessels. Anxious about his proximity to the fighting, McGonagle asked the Sixth Fleet commander, Vice-Adm. William Martin, for permission to pull back from the shore, or else to be provided with a destroyer escort. Martin rejected these requests, noting that the Liberty “is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation.”

Unbeknownst to both Martin and McGonagle, however, the JCS had repeatedly cabled the Liberty the previous night with instructions to withdraw to a distance of one hundred miles from the Egyptian and Israeli coasts. The transmission was delayed, however, by the navy’s overloaded, overly complex communication system, which routed messages as far east as the Philippines before relaying them to their destinations. The JCS’ orders would not be received by the Liberty until the following day, June 9, by which time they would no longer be relevant.17




At 5:55 a.m. on June 8, Cmdr. Uri Meretz, a naval observer aboard an Israel Air Force (IAF) reconnaissance plane, noted what he believed to be an American supply vessel, designated GTR-5, seventy miles west of the Gaza coast. At Israeli naval headquarters in Haifa, staff officers fixed the location of the ship with a red marker, indicating “unidentified,” on their control board. Research in Jane’s Fighting Ships, however, established the vessel’s identity as “the electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the United States, the Liberty.” The marker was changed to green, for “neutral.” Another sighting of the ship--“gray, bulky, with its bridge amidships”--was made by an Israeli fighter aircraft at 9:00 a.m., twenty miles north of El-Arish, on the Sinai coast, which had fallen to Israeli forces the day before.18 Neither of these reports made mention of the 5-by-8-foot American flag which, according to the ship’s crewmen, was flying from the Liberty’s starboard halyard.

The crew would also testify later that six IAF aircraft subsequently flew over the ship, giving them ample opportunity to identify its nationality. Israel Air Force reports, however, make no further mention of the Liberty.19 There may indeed have been additional Israeli overflights, but the IAF pilots were not looking for the Liberty. Their target was Egyptian submarines, which had been spotted off the coast. At 11:00 a.m., while the hunt for Egyptian submarines was on, the officer on duty at Israel’s naval headquarters, Capt. Avraham Lunz, concluded his shift. In accordance with procedures, he removed the Liberty’s green marker on the grounds that it was already five hours old and no longer accurate.20


Then, at 11:24, a terrific explosion rocked the shores of El-Arish. The blast was clearly heard by the men on the Liberty’s bridge, who had been navigating according to the town’s tallest minaret, and who also noted a thick pall of smoke wafting toward them. In El-Arish itself, Israeli forces were convinced they were being bombarded from the sea, and the IDF Southern Command reported sighting two unidentified vessels close offshore. Though the explosion probably resulted from an ammunition dump fire, that fact was unknown at the time, andboth Egyptian and Israeli sources had reported shelling of the area by Egyptian warships the previous day. There was therefore good reason to conclude that the Egyptian navy had trained its guns on Sinai.21



Minutes after the explosion, the Liberty reached the eastern limit of its patrol and turned 238 degrees back in the direction of Port Said. Meanwhile, reports of a naval bombardment on El-Arish continued to reach IDF General Staff Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Rabin took them seriously, concerned that the shelling was a prelude to an amphibious landing that could outflank advancing Israeli troops. [b]He reiterated the standing order to sink any unidentified ships in the war area, but also advised caution: Soviet vessels were reportedly operating nearby.[/b}Since no fighter planes were available, the navy was asked to intercede, with the assumption that air cover would be provided later. More than half an hour passed without any response from naval headquarters in Haifa. The General Staff finally issued a rebuke: “The coast is being shelled and you--the navy--have done nothing.”22 Capt. Izzy Rahav, who had replaced Lunz in the operations room, needed no more prodding. He dispatched three torpedo boats of the 914th squadron, code-named “Pagoda,” to find the enemy vessel responsible for the bombardment and destroy it. The time was 12:05 p.m.

At 1:41 p.m., Ensign Aharon Yifrah, combat information officer aboard the flagship of these torpedo boats, T-204, informed its captain, Cmdr. Moshe Oren,23 that an unidentified ship had been sighted northeast of El-Arish at a range of 22 miles. The ship was sailing toward Egypt at a speed, Yifrah estimated, of 30 knots.

Yifrah’s assessment, twice recalculated and confirmed by him, was pivotal. It meant that the ship could not be the Liberty, whose maximum speed was 18 knots. Moreover, the Israelis had standing orders to fire on any unknown vessel in the area sailing at over 20 knots, a speed which, at that time, could only be attained by fighting ships. This information, when added to the ship’s direction, indicated that the target was an enemy destroyer fleeing toward port after having shelled El-Arish.

The torpedo boats gave chase, but even at their maximum speed of 36 knots, they did not expect to overtake their target before it reached Egypt. Rahav therefore alerted the air force, and two Mirage III fighters were diverted from the Suez Canal, northeast to the sea. When they arrived, the vessel they saw was “gray with two guns in the forecastle, a mast and funnel.” Making two passes at 3,000 feet, formation commander Capt. Spector (IDF records do not provide pilots’ first names) reckoned that the ship was a “Z” or Hunt-class destroyer without the deck markings (a white cross on a red background) of the Israeli navy. Spector then spoke with air force commander Gen. Motti Hod, who asked him repeatedly whether he could see a flag. The answer was “Negative.” Nor were there any distinguishing marks other than some “black letters” painted on the hull.

IAF Intelligence Chief Col. Yeshayahu Bareket also claimed to have contacted American Naval Attaché Castle at this point in an attempt to ascertain whether the suspect ship was the Liberty, but the latter professed no knowledge of the Liberty’s schedule--a claim later denied by Castle but, strangely, confirmed by McGonagle.24 One fact is clear, however: After two low sweeps by the lead plane, at 1:58 p.m., the Mirages were cleared to attack.




The first salvos caught the Liberty’s crew in “stand-down” mode; several officers were sunning themselves on the deck, unaware of the Israeli jets bearing down on them. Before they could take shelter, rockets and 30-mm cannon shells stitched the ship from bow to stern, severing the antennas and setting oil drums on fire. Nine men were killed in the initial assault, and several times that number wounded, among them McGonagle. Radio operators on board found most of their frequencies inoperable and barely managed to send an SOS to the Sixth Fleet. The Mirages made three strafing runs and were then joined by two additional aircraft, Israeli Super-Mysteres returning from the Mitla Pass with a payload of napalm. After fourteen minutes of action, the pilots reported having made good hits--over eight hundred holes would later be counted in the hull. The entire superstructure of the ship, from the main deck to the bridge, was aflame.

Throughout these sorties, no one aboard the Liberty suspected that the planes were Israeli. Indeed, rumors spread that the attackers were Egyptian MiGs. After the first strike, the visibility that had enabled crewmen to identify IAF reconnaissance craft earlier in the day was lost to the smoke of battle. One of the Israeli pilots, curious as to why the vessel had not returned fire, made a final pass at ninety feet. “I see no flag,” he told headquarters. “But there are markings on the hull--Charlie-Tango-Romeo-five.”25

While Egyptian naval ships were known to disguise their identities with Western markings, they usually displayed Arabic letters and numbers only. The fact that the ship had Western markings led Rabin to fear that it was Soviet, and he immediately called off the jets. Two IAF Hornet helicopters were sent to look for survivors--Spector had reported seeing men overboard--while the torpedo boat squadron was ordered to hold its fire pending further attempts at identification. Though that order was recorded in the torpedo boat’s log, Oren claimed he never received it.26 It was now 2:20 in the afternoon; twenty-four minutes would pass before the squadron made contact with the Liberty.

During that interval, the ship’s original flag, having been shredded during the attack, was replaced by a larger (7-by-13-foot) holiday ensign. As the crew labored to tend to the wounded, extinguish the fire, and burn classified papers, contact was finally made with the Sixth Fleet. “Help is on the way,” replied the carrier America, which quickly unleashed eight of its most readily available warplanes--F-104s armed with nuclear weapons. Before they reached their objective, however, the jets were recalled by Vice-Adm. Martin. If Rabin feared that the ship was Russian, Martin suspected that its attackers were Russian, and without authorization from the highest level, he did not want to risk starting a nuclear war.27

Meanwhile, the Israeli torpedo boats came within range. The Liberty was shrouded in smoke, but even so, Oren could see that it could not be the destroyer that had supposedly shelled El-Arish. Rather, he believed, it was a slower-moving vessel that had either serviced that destroyer or evacuated enemy soldiers from the beach. At 6,000 meters, Oren’s T-204 flagship paused and signaled “AA”--“identify yourself.” Due to damaged equipment, McGonagle could only reply in kind, AA, with a hand-held Aldis lamp.28 Oren remembered receiving a similar response from the Egyptian destroyer Ibrahim al-Awwal, captured by the Israeli navy in the 1956 war, and was sure that he now faced an enemy ship. Consulting his naval intelligence manual, he concluded that the vessel in front of him--its deck line, midship bridge and smokestack--resembled the Egyptian freighter El-Quseir. The officers of the other two boats reached the same conclusion independently, and followed Oren into battle formation.29

Any lingering doubts were soon dispelled as the Israeli boats came under sudden fire from the Liberty. Unaware of McGonagle’s order not to shoot at the approaching boats, a sailor had opened up with one of the Brownings. Another machine gun also fired, apparently on its own, triggered by exploding ammunition. Oren repeatedly requested permission from naval headquarters to return fire. Rahav finally approved. 30

Of the five torpedoes fired at the Liberty only one found its mark, a direct hit on the starboard side, killing twenty-five, almost all of them from the intelligence section. The Israeli craft closed in, their cannons and machine guns raking the Liberty’s hull and, according to the crew’s testimony, its life rafts as well. One of those rafts, picked up by T-203, was found to bear U.S. Navy markings--the first indication that Oren had that the ship might be American. His suspicions mounted when while circling the badly listing ship, Oren confronted the designation GTR-5. But still no flag was spotted, and it would take another half an hour, until 3:30 p.m., to establish the vessel’s identity.31

“I must admit I had mixed feelings about the news--profound regret at having attacked our friends and a tremendous sense of relief [that the boat was not Soviet],” Rabin later recalled.32 News of the ship’s American nationality had arrived during an emergency meeting of the General Staff to discuss possible Soviet reprisals. An apology was immediately sent to Castle, and none too soon, as eight conventionally armed warplanes had been launched from the USS Saratoga and sanctioned to “use whatever force required to defend the Liberty.”

As the American jets returned to their carrier, the two Israeli Hornets reached the Liberty and offered assistance. Oren, shouting through a bullhorn, also tried to communicate with the ship. But McGonagle refused to respond. Realizing, finally, that his assailants had been Israeli, he flagged the torpedo boats away and gestured provocatively at the Hornets. Even Castle himself, arriving just before dusk in another Israeli chopper, was denied permission to land. By 5:05 p.m., the Israelis had broken off contact, and the Liberty, navigating virtually without systems, with 34 dead and 171 wounded aboard, staggered out to sea. 33

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Their first report was that it was moving too fast to be the liberty.

Given the fact that it was a) a clear day, b) the ship was flying an American flag, c) there was more than one recon flight, d) was in international waters, and e) it looked nothing like the Egyptian horse transport El Quseir that they claimed it was I find it hard to believe that it was anything other than at best very, very gross negligence on the part of the IDF.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Given the fact that it was a) a clear day, b) the ship was flying an American flag, c) there was more than one recon flight, d) was in international waters, and e) it looked nothing like the Egyptian horse transport El Quseir that they claimed it was I find it hard to believe that it was anything other than at best very, very gross negligence on the part of the IDF.

Apparently some of the recon flights were actually hunting subs, and didnt even note the presence of a surface ship, let alone if they saw the flag.

I can only refer you to the Japanese plane that failed to report critical info at the battle of Midway, despite that being its primary mission.

As for International Waters, it was as stated in waters where Egyptian warships were expected to be, and other ships were NOT expected. In fact it was for that very reason that US command had apparently attempted to move it to a safer location, but orders didnt get through in time. There were mistakes on the US side as well, as declassified info now makes clear.