Letters to the Editor
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Wow...
...haven't heard the old "missile gap" justification for spending ungodly amounts of money trotted out in a long time.
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@ quickstrategy
I think you forgot the Nicaraguan tank divisions that were just days away from the Texas border...
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No shit.
...haven't heard the old "missile gap" justification for spending ungodly amounts of money trotted out in a long time.
I mean really!
Or shit. And someone needs their diapers changed again.
Aych,
Whatever aerosonde is, it ain't this.
TERCOM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercom
And guess who has it. Just us, the Russians, the Chinese... and Pakistan. It's probably safe to say they all got the technology from us, one way or another.
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@Strangely Enough
...haven't heard the old "missile gap" justification for spending ungodly amounts of money trotted out in a long time.
Ah, prepare, Herr Doktor, for much much more! Why, with all the attention Luis Posada Carilles is getting lately, I fully expect President Merkin to make the case to the public that...
... WE CANNOT ALLOW A TERROR GAP!
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Juan Cole
"Said country has no modern history of invading its neighbors and, to date, shows no signs it can credibly threaten anyone (despite the scary stuff its powerless figurehead of a President tends to say)."
Juan Cole tells me that the figurehead president is often misquoted making him sound much worse than what his actual words would convict him of being.
Imagine that, western media misreporting a situation to make war even more likely. I wish we could get some ex-litigator to start a blog exposing this kind of thing. :-)
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McCain
" ... Senator John McCain, who seeks endorsements from haters of Roman Catholics, is alleging that Hamas has "endorsed" Barack Obama. He darkly suggests that this means something.
It is a despicable, dirty campaign trick. Who do you think the Ku Klux Klan will be endorsing? And if the Grand Dragons plump for McCain, does that tell us anything about McCain except that he is pasty faced? You can't logically read off anything at all from an unsolicited endorsement.
Actually it occurred to me to ask who is endorsing McCain in the Muslim world." [...]
It gets real good about here.
http://www.juancole.com/2008/05/zawahiri-endorses-mccain-plan-to-bomb.html
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@ Tone
I think the books are important; an engaged, enthusiastic teacher is even more so. The best texts in the world don't make up for an indifferent, apathetic instructor.
We don't really disagree. Teachers are definitely an irreplaceable part of the equation. But when I had an apathetic instructor, and it happened, I learned anyhow because I loved to read. So while neither alone is a panacea, I do believe that textbooks that are well-written and engaging, as well as truthful, can go a long way toward maintaining interest.
It's the "truthful" part that I was mostly referring to in my earlier post. History is engaging when it isn't the whitewashed pabulum that so often passes for it in our basic educational system.
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@ Glenn Greenwald
Thanks for your response! I'm just now only a couple hours into the DoD "Propagandists for Profit™" link (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/) and I really look forward to your near future post/s on this overflowing cesspool.
For those who just can't wait (*g*), here's some more from the "Tara Jones E-mails 200-699" link (http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/16%20Jan%2008/Tara%20Jones%20E-mails%20200-699.pdf):
MEMORANDUM
To: Civilian Defense Experts and Retired Military Analysts
From: Redacted
Public Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Date: January 17, 2007
Re: Conference Call with Senior DoD Officials
We invite you to participate in a conference call, TOMORROW, January 18, 2006, from 12:30-1:00 p.m.
Mr. Daniel J. Dell'Orto, Principal Deputy General Counsel, and Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, Legal Advisor to the Convening Authority in the Department of Defense Office of Military Commissions, will brief you on the Military Commissions Manual.
This call will be On Background.
And from the attached propaganda plan for the Retired Military Analysts - "Propagandists for Profit™" to help the Administration snowjob:
Military Commissions Manual Roll-Out Communications Plan
...Assumptions:
* The roll-out of the Military Commission rules will result in a major international and domestic news story for 24-48 hours.
* The publication of the procedural rules will be well accepted initially as progress in the right direction, but immediately followed up with questions asking when the detainees will be charged and when the trials will begin.
* NGOs and critics of the system will tie the release of the rules with the January 11th "5-year anniversary" of the detainees at GTMO and highlight the length of time the detainees have been held without trial and emphasize how long it has taken the USG to get a "legal" system in place.
*Aspects of the procedural rules that appear disadvantageous to the defense will be highly critized, resulting in the overall criticism that the rules are unfair.
*Hardcopies and electronic copies of the procedural rules will be of great interest to the media and NGOs.
*Defense attorneys will immediately begin working on ways within the Federal Court system to file motions alleging unfair procedures.
Goals:
* Achieve balanced media coverage of the Military Commissions procedures.
* Coordinate and deliver a strong message emphasizing the goal to conduct fair trials while protecting national security.
* Demonstrate that Military Commissions provide a full and fair trial to try unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war.
* Brief a Congressional member who serves in both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee who can serve as a strong proponent for the Military Commissions process on Capital Hill.
* The rules and trial procedures delivered to Congress establish extensive, comprehensive guidance for the conduct of Military Commissions.
* Move forward with the charges after the implementing rules have been promulgated.
* Re-charge prior cases with trials anticipated to begin in summer 2007.
* Prosecution to begin building new cases on 14 high value detainees.
* Improve courthouse facilities on GTMO in order to provide safe and secure trials with maximum transparency.
(Bold mine)
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Apparently not a theory anymore
This is the freshest news on the incident that I can find. Truly amazing that there is hardly any reporting of this. They must all care more about Obama's black preacher and bowling, like Gator90.
chicagotribune.com
TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT: THE STRIKE ON THE USS LIBERTY
Additional material published Dec 2
New revelations in attack on American spy ship
Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn't tell full story of deadly '67 incident
By John Crewdson
Tribune senior correspondent
October 2, 2007
Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.
"I'm angry! I'm seething with anger! Forty years, and I'm seething with anger!"
Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.
For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.
"They tried to lie their way out of it!" Lockwood shouts. "I don't believe that for a minute! You just don't shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!"
Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.
Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.
The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.
In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country's chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had "become the center of considerable controversy and debate." It was not the agency's intention, it said, "to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material," available at http://www.nsa.gov/liberty .
[...]
THE ATTACK ON THE LIBERTY
1:56 p.m. Two Israeli Mirage III aircraft, followed by two Super Mystere aircraft, begin their attack on the Liberty.
2:14 p.m. The chief Israeli air controller in Tel Aviv tells the controller who is directing the attack on the Liberty that the ship is "apparently American."
[...]
Sources: National Security Agency documents, Tribune reporting
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,1,6293149,print.story
Apparently not a theory anymore.
Even Israelis heard more about it than we did.
Last update - 14:04 04/10/2007
Israeli communications said to prove IAF knew Liberty was U.S. ship
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
The Israel Air Force warplanes and Israel Navy warships that attacked the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, at the height of the Six-Day War, were aware that the vessel was an American spy ship, according to new testimony published Thursday in the Chicago Tribune.
The report stated that the U.S. National Security Agency - to which the intelligence gathering ship belonged - was able to intercept IAF communications according to which, at some stage, the pilots identified the ship as American but were nonetheless instructed to push ahead with the attack.
According to the report, some of the transcripts and intelligence information have disappeared, while the rest can be found in U.S. government archives.
Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, is quoted by the Tribune as confirming the existence of the transcripts, saying he personally read them.
"They said, 'We've got him in the zero,'" Kirby was quoted as saying, "whatever that meant - I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, 'Can you see the flag?' They said 'Yes, it's U.S, it's U.S.' They said it several times, so there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind that they knew it."
Kirby told the newspaper that the transcripts were "something that's bothered me all my life. I'm willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew."
The report also states that then U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara ordered jets that had been dispatched to assist the Liberty turned around.
The Tribune quotes J.Q. "Tony" Hart, then a chief petty officer assigned to a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco that handled communications between Washington and the 6th Fleet, as saying that he listened in as McNamara said, "President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors."
McNamara, who is now 91, told the Tribune he has "absolutely no recollection of what I did that day," except that "I have a memory that I didn't know at the time what was going on."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909552.html
Israel still denies it wasn't a case of mistaken identity. So would this administration, I suppose.