What a wonderful argument!
Devastating in its logic, exceptional in its appeal to reason. I must laminate it for my wallet! ********************************** Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles. Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 818 352-4141 ********************************** From: Lawrence de Bivort [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 18, 2007 11:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] with friends & gov't like these, who needs al-Qaeda? Harry, your ignorance on this is only exceeded by your arrogance. You don't like the tempest? Then stop provoking it. _____ From: Harry Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 18, 2007 1:18 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] with friends & gov't like these, who needs al-Qaeda? Lawry, I suppose we have to continue this 'tempest in a teapot'. I didn't realize there were so many official sites discussing the incident. Or, that there were even more conspiracy theory sites. So, I probably put 'Israeli USS Liberty' in the Google search to link the two. But, I don't really know. The Virtual Library site was on top. I don't think I've ever seen or accessed the site before. I pulled it up and read with interest. I particularly noted the ten official US inquiries made with little evidence that it was anything but an accident. These incidents happen in wartime, particularly as Israel was defending herself against the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria whose intention was to drive the Israelis into the sea. Not exactly a time of calm and controlled thinking. Israeli planes at the time bombed one of their own armored column - these things happen. (One recalls that in Normandy, American planes bombed American troops - then came back and bombed them again.) Of course conspiracy theorists are not interested in truth. Nor are those whose 15 minutes of fame are congealed in a book - or nowadays, a blog. The best argument that it was an accident is that Israel had nothing to gain from the attack on its closest ally. There is a claim (which ranges between silly and laughable) that the Liberty was examining Israeli troops murdering civilians (from 12.5 miles away at sea level) and that Israel sank her to stop this crime being publicized. Haven't seen any other theories but I'm sure there are other equally incredible assertions. They tend to sprout up around such incidents. The 9/11 incident is a good example and I've seen people practically froth at the mouth if one denies the US blew up the towers, or asserts that it wasn't a cruise missile that hit the Pentagon. And so on. Again, I would remind you that after reading the long piece from Chris, I checked it on Google, brought up the first site I found (Ahah! Pollard deliberately chose a hard-core Israeli site!) The only thing that stayed with me was a listing of the 10 official US inquiries (we'll forget the 3 Israeli ones as they were probably hard-core). None of them found the Israelis guilty of knowingly attacking an American ship. Yet, Chris wrote: "9. That due to continuing pressure by the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, this attack remains the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress;" Except for: ------------------------------------------------- The Clifford Report - 1967 - to LBJ. Not to Congress but to the White House. Conclusion: "f. The unprovoked attack on the Liberty constitutes a flagrant act of gross negligence for which the Israeli Government should be held completely responsible, and the Israeli military personnel involved should be punished." -------------------------------------------- Senate Foreign Relations - 1967: Macnamara - "the attack was not intentional". -------------------------------------------- Senate Armed Services - 1967: No conclusion. -------------------------------------------- House Appropriations - 1968: Navy communications foulup - no conclusions. -------------------------------------------- House Armed Services - 1971: Critical of Navy communications - no conclusion. ----------------------------------------- Senate - Intelligence - 1979: Found no merit in Liberty crewman claim that attack was intentional. ----------------------------------------- House Armed Services - 1991: Probe launched but came up with no evidence to support allegations by Liberty Veterans Association. ----------------------------------------- Then there was the CIA Report "a mistake", the NSA report "miscalculations and egregious errors", and of course the 725 page complete record of the US Navy Court of Inquiry that concluded "case of mistaken identity". ---------------------------------------- The above listing from A.J.Cristol's PhD dissertation - U. of Miami 1997 - pp 86-113. --------------------------------------- Cristol is probably a member of Mossad, or at least in the pay of the Israelis, but what can one do - the Jews are everywhere. Heck, there's a noise under my desk. It might be Sammy the dog, but also might be Israeli Intelligence inserting more false information onto my hard disk. All I did was to check the Liberty story at the first URL - I noted the US investigations above - and then I posted the URL that I looked at with an suggestion "Check this." You could have said "Harry, their view is one-sided - check out ????" - giving me a couple of other sites. I would probably have done so. Instead, you called me a propagandist, writing "any old nonsense", and complained about my "research" (That's a laugh!) You suggested that other things I write might be suspect and three times alluded to some secret agenda I might have. Is this an intelligent reaction? The Israelis had nothing to gain and everything to lose by deliberately attacking an American ship. If they did, that wasn't very intelligent either. Lawry, it was an accident occasioned by both Israeli and American incompetence. Harry ********************************** Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles. Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 818 352-4141 ********************************** From: Lawrence de Bivort [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 3:37 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] with friends & gov't like these, who needs al-Qaeda? Not haughtiness, Harry. Boredom. Do you really want to insist? Really? OK..... 1. You assert repeatedly that you merely grabbed material on the Liberty from the 'first site' of the list that Google generated for you. You assert that you did not deliberately choose a propaganda source hoping to mislead us. 2. OK, there is a simple test of your veracity: Tell us the words you entered into Google that led Google to generate 'jewish virtual library' as the first choice. Seeing as you were querying the USS Liberty incident, I imagine you started off with "USS Liberty...." What words did you next enter? 3. And then we'll talk about the likelihood of your 'accidentally' failing to notice that you were copying from a pro-Israeli site..... _____ From: Harry Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 2:44 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] with friends & gov't like these, who needs al-Qaeda? Really Lawry, I mildly mentioned I had googled a site (that I had never seen before but was the first to come up in google) simply to remind me of the incident and you made a Federal case out of it. Because you wouldn't let it go and made allusions about me personally (for which you should apologize) I continued it a little further. Three questions occurred to me which I felt sure you could answer to my satisfaction, but you won't answer them. Maybe you can't answer these simple questions. Anyway, you have now become haughty and refuse to continue. Hooray! You should have decided that earlier before your silly remarks about "my agenda". Harry ********************************** Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles. Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 818 352-4141 **********************************
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