Holy Toledo! Sarge, I, (as usual), agree with everything you said and believe that it was a blue on blue accident... except... I have a hardcover copy of James M. Ennes, jr's Assault on the Liberty and he states on pg.77 that the American jets were F-4 Phantoms from the carrier America. Ennes is also pretty clear that he's not sure if the F-4's were actually nuclear armed, only rumors. Lastly, Ennes qualifies as at least some kind of expert, he was a ships officer on the Liberty during the attack... OTHERWISE, CL

As far as the likelihood or possibility of mistaking an identification goes, let's keep in mind that in the last ten years or so, ***American*** forces have, mistakenly, attacked: 1)The Chinese embassy to Serbia/Yugoslavia, in Belgrade 2)A British APC detachment during the Gulf War (Bush 1) (As a result of this screw-up, a British civilian court actually indicted several American service personnel for homicide). 3)Several American and British aircraft, during the late fighting in Iraq 4)The Al Rasheed Hotel, in Baghdad, an incident reported across the entire Western world by the angry Western reporters actually in the hotel at the time we opened fire. 5)There was at least one incident during the fighting in Afghanistan of an American plane bombing an American position. This was during the rising at the military prison, when American Special Forces personnel were present helping our Afghan Allies put the rising down. 6)Similarly, you may recall the Canadian military killed by the American F-16 bombing, for which the American pilot was put up for a court martial. And, this barely scratches the surface of friendly fire and mistaken fire incidents. In fact, the dirty secret of warfare is that friendly fire is VERY common and that a LOT of people are killed, by mistake, often by their own military. And, if you think recent history is bad, consider that we've gotten MUCH better at avoiding these incidents. The incidence of friendly fire casualties during WW2 is certainly in the tens of thousands and may be much higher.

Having read the article, I'll add the following criticisms: 1)ID by air Sorry, but claims that it's easy to ID ships from the air or that the Israeli pilots couldn't have made a mistake fly in the face of AMERICAN military aviation experience. Read any decent history of American operations during WW2. Our own pilots OFTEN misidentified ships, from the air. So did the Japanese. It was extremely common. And not small mistakes. There is at least one famous instance - don't recall whether this was during the Battle of the Coral Sea or the Battle of Midwya, when someone managed to get an oiler confused with an aircraft carrier. 2)Couldn't have missed the flag - The evidence cited by the critics in the article doesn't support their own claims. The article cites gun camera footage from one of the Israeli jets showing smoke rising vertically, which pretty well counters claims that there was always wind blowing which would have caused the flag to display in the breeze, rather than hang out of sight.

In the links reading the clifford clarke reprot, a couple of facts are pointed out, despite, 11b10 suggestions that the ships could be easily confused. The report states that the ships were widely different in size and structure. The aircraft made 6 straffing run, which are very short range, even in the gulf war, when a british warrior was attacked with rockets (suggesting a long range attack), the warrior is only about 20ft long (not 500). The other incidences given were all long range. So the aircraft flew over straffing, 6 times, the smoke would have taken time to rise up. Then helicopters circle the ship at less than 500yds (and cannot differentiate between two ships, one of which is 1/4th size of the other),a nd with a differnet structure. The second wave of aircraft noted that the shiip was not arab, as they has read the 10ft hight GTR-5 ont he fornt of the vessel, ytet they still sent some helicopters and torpedo boats, all of which closed on the ship. Even after this, no Israeli was ewver charged with the attack.

I'm really quit surprised that a popular "conspiracy theory" hasn't popped up out of that one. Maybe it has in China. Given that China is not very friendly to us, (in fact sometimes drifts towards "hostile"), and we hit the intelligence section of the Embassy, 2 of the 3 dead being intelligence officers, I think the odds of the Chinese Embassy bombing being intentional are slightly higher than the Liberty attack being intentional. Not much higher, but better than zero. 11b10 posted some excellent links, which pretty much demolish the "intentional" theory. Especially the Sigint plane. If the Israelis were intentionally attacking the Liberty to blind our intel in the area, one must ask, why would they not also attack the other asset, which they clearly knew about- a big, slow SIGINT aircraft at 15,000 feet above the Liberty. (and more important since it had the hebrew speaking linguists aboard) Israel had total air supremacy, shooting it down "accidentally" would have been much easier than attackign the Liberty. And a question for the naval weapons buffs (If it's gray and floats, it's outside my area of knowledge): The Liberty took a direct hit from a Torpedo and SURVIVED? WWII era cruisers SUNK from single torpedo hits, right up to the General Belgrano. Smaller ships like destoyers just broke in two. What's up with that?

We mustn't jump to conclusions concerning the Chinese embassy bombing. Just because we never actually articulated any legitimate reasons for bombing Serbia doesn't mean we had no legitimate reasons to accidently bomb the Chinese embassy while doing it.

It may very well be that the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy was in fact a mistake, but the explanation provided by US authorities was totally bogus. US officials claimed the US was using basically tourist-type maps several years old and horribly outdated. I find it odd that the US would take the time to properly program the coordinates into the satellite-guided bombs, but didn't feel the need to double-check a more recent map. Odd indeed!

jbwill2, It's worse than that. The Clinton administration would have you believe that they programmed 3 precision-guided missiles and flew a B-2 Bomber half-way across the globe to attack what on their "outdated" maps was an empty lot covered with grass.

Considering the amounts of US missile and nuclear technology the Chinese recieved during the Clinton years (another Great Leap Forward?) One would have to assume either it was an accident (for whatever reason-it could happen), or the Chinese were behind on their payments... FLIP A COIN, CL

I noticed this morning that tonight (Wednesday) at 8pm Eastern time, the History Channel is going to show a program about the USS Liberty incident.