October 24, 2003

Open Letter to UPI: With regards to "New charges vs. Israel in '67 ship attack ".   First of all, there are no new charges listed in the article as far as I can see.  The charge that this was intentional has been around since June 8, 1967.  This article makes that clear when it points out that, "Boston had made these charges informally".   Second and most importantly, no where in the article does it point out that this regretable event happened in the middle of the the Six-Day War.  Even my ten year old daughter can tell you that the Six-Day War began on June 5, 1967, and ended on June 10.  Failing the ability to find a 10 year old girl to ask, I suppose anyone could have spent one minute with Google.  I cannot imagine that one of two senior naval officials investigating the attack would not have noticed a war going on. It occurs to me that the writer, Nicholas M. Horrock, and Ward Boston, who is quoted so often in the article, had to know this, and leave out that very important fact intentionaly.   By stating that "the incident came a few months before the 1967 Middle East war in which Egypt and Israel were adversaries" the author completly changes the context of event.     In light of the Jason Blair and Andrew Gilligan incidents, it is my belief that the editors and publishers of UPI should be investigating the motivation of this writer, and find out why he would play right into the hands of the conspiracy theorists.   In deed, with the recent declassification of formally top secret documents in the United States and Israel, the attack on the Liberty can now be reconstructed virtually minute-by-minute and with remarkable detail. The picture that emerges is not one of crime at all, nor even of criminal negligence, but of a string of failed communications, human errors, unfortunate coincidences and equipment failures on both the American and Israeli sides - the kind of tragic, senseless mistake that is all too common in the thick of war.   UPDATE: UPI's Beth Redmond replies that the story has been corrected.  It now states that "the incident came a few days into the 1967 Middle East war in which Egypt and Israel were adversaries."   OK Beth, glad we cleared that up.... 11:52:30 AM