On the fourth day of the Six Day War (8 Jun 1967), at about 2 PM Sinai time (then, GMT+2), Israeli defense forces attacked the USS Liberty about 14 miles off the coast of the Sinai peninsula, near El Arish.This would not surprise me. When I lived in Austin I took the daily paper, and as soon as Stupidfada II began (i.e. a year before the WTC attack) there was a letter to the editor about the USS Liberty about once every two weeks. And those are just the ones they printed. On message boards where Israel gets discussed you will see rants about the USS Liberty more often than quotes from The Protocols. It's one of those pre-cooked anti-Israel conspiracies that can be popped in the microwave, warmed up, and served on a moment's notice.
After ten official US investigations (including five congressional investigations), there was never any evidence that the attack was made with knowledge that the target was a US ship and that there is substantial evidence the attack was a tragic mistake caused by blunders of both the US and Israel. Eight US presidents, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush (41), Clinton, and Bush (43), have each accepted the conclusion that the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity.
Nevertheless, conspiracy theorists continue to claim the Israelis knowingly attacked a US ship. By some estimates, there are more conspiracy theories about the Liberty incident than about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
This site carefully dissects and rebuts the theories. Apply where appropriate.
(via Bill Herbert, who writes about meeting A. Jay Cristol, who created the site and wrote a book on the subject.) (Bill via Meryl, who notes an excellent fisking of John Pilger's latest crap on the same blog)
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