posted by admin on Sep 9
Some details:
A retired college professor who has sailed approximately 8,000 miles to the eastern Mediterranean is expected to arrive at his destination within the next 24 hours: the exact location where Israeli forces tried to sink a US Navy ship in 1967, killing or injuring over 200 American servicemen.
Didn’t you know?
Read on then,….
Or if you are one of those who deny’s history, then call me all the usual names and be done with it already.
Larry Toenjes, 74 years old, is planning to hold a memorial service for those killed on board the ship, the USS Liberty. Israel shelled and torpedoed the ship, an electronics surveillance ship, in an attack that lasted as long as the attack on Pearl Harbor.
While Israel and its partisans have tried to claim that the attack was “a mistake,” a 2003 inquiry by an INDEPENDENT COMMISSION led by a retired FOUR STAR NAVY ADMIRAL, a Rear Admiral, and the highest ranking Medal of Honor recipient in the U.S., a Marine General, announced on Capitol Hill that ALL THE EVIDENCE indicated that the attack had been INTENTIONAL, had consisted of an ACT OF WAR against the United States by ISRAEL, and that a COVER UP had been ORDERED by the White House.
In addition, the commission found that rescue flights had been recalled by President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. While almost no media covered the Capitol Hill briefing, a full record of its findings are in the Congressional Record and Stars and Stripes military newspaper.
Mr Toenjes, A TRUE PATRIOT…. who departed from Galveston, Texas, almost four months ago, is accompanied by a Marine veteran who joined him in Malta.
Toenjes will remain 12 miles offshore, in international waters, where the attack took place.
In a column published by the Galveston News, Toenjes explained that he was undertaking the voyage for two primary purposes: to honor the men who died in service to their country and to try to draw attention to attempts by their surviving families and crew mates to obtain the full government investigation that is legally required but that has been blocked by the powerful Israel Lobby.
Toenjes’ trip is being tracked on the website of the Council for the National Interest (CNI). When he arrives at his destination, the CNI website will stream live his memorial service, which will be carried by satellite phone to a radio program hosted by a Liberty survivor, Phil Tourney.
OF COURSE,…the national media have IGNORED this voyage (I wonder why eh?), Toenjes and Liberty survivors hope that the American public will learn about his undertaking by word of mouth, blogs, and social media like Yahoo Answers etc.
http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/costs/attackontheussliberty.html
http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-commfindings.html
http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/costs/attackontheussliberty/item/652-boston-declaration.html
Is what this PATRIOT is doing "good"?
Shouldn’t ALL AMERICANS be supporting him in his efforts to remember Americans who were killed in INTERNATIONAL WATERS,…By Israel?
All thoughts welcome.
bev.
I know more about IFF systems than you will ever know dear.
Oh yes I do.
I have used such systems many times IN BATTLE and in exercises.
Probably before you were born.
Go and try to wake up,..please.
The "Liberty Incident" was the product of gross incompetence by BOTH SIDES. Here is as detailed an account as YA allows space for regarding what really happened and why:
In June 1967 the NSA without notifying Israel or even U.S. 6th Fleet redirected the signals intelligence ship USS Liberty to operate just 12 instead of 100 miles off the coast of Sinai, in a war zone, in a lane not used by commercial shipping & declared off-limits by Egypt (i.e. only Egyptian warships were likely to be found there). At 6:00am on 6/8/67 an IDF patrol aircraft spotted the Liberty and reported her hull number GTR-5 to IDF Naval HQ where an hour later she was identified as American and marked as a neutral ship on the manual plotting (map) table with a wooden model. The problem with these old (pre-computer) manual plots is that they quickly become clogged with outdated and erroneous information and need to be cleared frequently. At 11:00am the watch changed at IDF Naval HQ and the new shift followed procedure by CLEARING THE BOARD, but did so without bothering to check if the neutral ship was still present. They simply assumed it had moved on! While just one of the many mistakes made that morning by both sides this typically appalling lack of basic professionalism is what ultimately sealed Liberty’s fate. So yes, while the accusation that the IDF knew what and where the USS Liberty was is true, it is also meaningless as after 11:00am everyone in Israel who knew gone home to bed. For all practical purposes the Liberty had ceased to exist.
1/2 hour later panicky inexperienced IDF reservists at El Arish reported an explosion which they blamed erroneously on naval gunfire. The plotting board at IDF naval HQ was clear, showing no neutral or friendly ships so it was naturally assumed ANY ship in the area was hostile and the likely cause of this reported shelling. This set in motion a series of badly coordinated, virtually unplanned and haphazard attacks using resources wholly unsuited to the task. First a flotilla of 3 small Motor Torpedo Boats were dispatched (with considerable difficulty and delay) to intercept the phantom Egyptian warship, approaching the Liberty just as she was at the end of her "racetrack" patrol pattern and turning about back towards Egypt. The MTB commander interpreted this course change as an Egyptian warship turning to run for home so he pursued. Unable to catch the "fleeing enemy vessel" air support was called in and 2 flights of fighters on ground-attack missions were diverted to this effort. None of the pilots had any training in ship recognition or attack and were not armed for the job, having only guns and Napalm, not the AP rockets and delayed-action bombs one would use when planning to attack a ship. The jets arrived to look for the fleeing Egyptian warship, made a couple of passes at 3,000 feet altitude, saw no Israeli markings on the ship and therefore identified it as Egyptian – a Hunt or Z class destroyer. The ID was wrong but this was not their fault. They were not looking to see what ship this was but rather what Egyptian ship this was and for what little they knew about ships they had one. Remember, there was no other traffic on the plot so they were not expecting to find anything else but an Egyptian warship. At 1:58pm the aircraft were cleared to attack, which lasted 14 minutes until one of the pilots recognized Latin, not Arabic markings on the now burning ship, radioed the information to IDF Air Force HQ and broke off. This information was then passed to IDF Naval HQ but this was 1967, there was a war going on and the WW2 surplus IDF communications system was clogged with a massive backlog of messages. It would take another 2 hours before the Navy knew what the Air Force already knew – that USS Liberty was not an enemy ship.
25 minutes after the end of the air attack the MTB’s finally caught-up the burning Liberty from astern and flashed a recognition signal. USS Liberty gave a vague reply and an (unauthorized) burst of machine gun fire. The MTB commander naturally interpreted this as an Egyptian ship fighting back so he attacked at 2:45pm with his elderly array of light guns & WW2 surplus torpedoes. 15 minutes later while circling the Liberty one of the boats made out the hull number GTR-5 in Latin, immediately ordered a cease-fire and offered assistance. Hardly the actions of someone intent on sinking a ship he knew all along was American. Subsequently the Israeli government paid compensation to the families of the 34 men killed in the attack and to the wounded as well as settlement for the for damage to the ship.
It is a curious thing the 1987 attack by our then-ally Iraq on the USS Stark, which killed more American’s than the attack on USS Liberty is virtually forgotten today. In 4 years I have never seen anyone ask "Why did Iraq attack the Stark" on YA. But the Liberty comes up here at least weekly. Why is that?