November 11, 2012: Remember the USS LIBERTY this Veterans Day
On election day in Florida's new 5th District, 7,837 voters cast theirs for Eileen Fleming (NPA) - U.S. House District 5
That equates to 3% of voters. The republican, Tea-Party Christian Zionist LeaAnn Kolb received 69,650 votes and 186,788 cast their vote for two more years of the now 11th term incumbent, Corrine Brown.
[LEARN MORE: Message to Rep. Corrine Brown and My Time to Be a Voice of Conscience
Hunter Thompson noted that in a democracy the people get the kind've government they deserve and Edward R. Murrow coined the phrase, "Good Night and Good Luck."
Both came to mind to this candidate for US HOUSE, who is foremost a writer who managed to raise awareness in the Mainstream Media on the political battlefield about the need to end federal regulations of cannabis and allow the states the RIGHT to legalize and reap all profits and to dare to mention the USS LIBERTY-which for me, is a mission accomplished but not yet finished!
Eileen Fleming (NPA) - U.S. House District 5
Any monkey can be trained to stand on a street and
wave a flag, but only when we listen to our Veterans and act in their defense;
do we truly Support The Troops!
Veterans Day originated on the first
"Armistice Day" on Nov. 11, 1919, which marked the first anniversary
of the end of World War I.
Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual
observance, and ever since 1938, Nov. 11 has been a national holiday.
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation
to change the name to Veterans Day as a way to honor all who served in American
wars.
A year prior, Eisenhower admitted:
“Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
“It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is
this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power
plants, each serving a town of 60,000. It is two fine, fully equipped
hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
“We pay for a single fighter plane with a
half million bushels of wheat.
“We pay for a single destroyer with new
homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
“This is not a way of life at all, in any
true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a
cross of iron.”
In his Farewell Address, Eisenhower warned
of the potential for the “disastrous rise of misplaced power” from militarist
interests that would gain control over this country's national security policy;
and it happened on June 8, 1967 [and continues today with the candidacy of Mitt
Romney who said he would increase military assistance and coordination with
Israel, which has threatened a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear
facilities.]
On that day in infamy during The Six Day
War, Israel attacked America’s premier spy ship as it navigated in
international waters and killed 34 and wounded over 170 Americans out of the unarmed crew of 294.
All those troops have
been scarred for life because the American Government failed to support the men
aboard the USS LIBERTY, who continue to request an open and transparent Naval
Inquiry with Congressional oversight to address the Israeli claim of mistaken
identity.
In “The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S.
Spy Ship” by son of a LIBERTY survivor, journalist and author
James Scott blew apart the only American investigation that was ever conducted--the
U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry’s white wash rush job that confirmed Israel’s
claim.
Scott clearly contradicts it by the facts
that he uncovered through his hundreds of interviews with Liberty survivors,
senior administration and intelligence officials and recently declassified
documents by Israel and America.
Scott’s fast paced tome gives voice to the
frustrated outrage felt by many inside the Pentagon, State Department, NSA,
Navy and even a few Congressional representatives.
Among many issues Scott illuminates, is that
Israel’s chain of command were well aware of the Liberty’s true identity and he
eviscerates their excuse of “mistaken identity” of the uniquely American flag
waving ship.
Scott reveals how the American government
de-emphasized the attack because of the war in Vietnam and illuminates the
American Government’s preference in support of the Industrial Military Complex
over the lives and well being of American servicemen.
Scott documents that Israeli pilots, air
control staff and navy officers in Tel Aviv and Haifa were aware that before
their unprovoked brutal torpedo attacks on the unarmed spy ship that the vessel
was definitely American.
“More than twenty minutes before the fatal
torpedo strike killed twenty-five sailors; Israel’s chief air controller
conclusively identified the Liberty as an American ship.” [Page 216]
Many years after the attack, Lieutenant
Colonel Shmuel Kislev, the chief air controller at general headquarters in Tel
Aviv, confessed that he knew the U.S.S. LIBERTY was an American ship as soon as
an Israeli pilot radioed in its hull numbers.
Two months before the sailor’s mass burial
at Arlington Cemetery, Navy analysis also uncovered that the Israeli torpedo
boat gunners had targeted the spy ship with 40-mm tracer rounds made in the
United States.
In 1967, the Republican representative from
Iowa, H.R. Gross asked questions that still demand an answer today:
“Is this
Government now, directly or indirectly, subsidizing Israel in the payment of
full compensation for the lives that were destroyed, the suffering of the
wounded, and the damage from this wanton attack? It can well be asked whether
these Americans were the victims of bombs, machine gun bullets and torpedoes
manufactured in the United States and dished out as military assistance under
foreign aid.” [Pages 271-272]
By November 1967, lawmakers were willing to
spend six million USA tax dollars to build schools in Israel but during the
debate, Representative Gross spoke with the voice of conscience and introduced
an amendment that “not one dollar of U.S. credit or aid of any kind [should] go to Israel
until there is a firm settlement with regard to the attack and full reparations
have been made [and Israel] provides full and complete reparations for the
killing and wounding of more than 100 United States citizens in the wanton,
unprovoked attack…I wonder how you would feel if you were the father of one of
the boys who was killed in that connection-or perhaps you do not have any
feelings with respect to these young men who were killed, wounded and maimed,
or their families.” [Page 272-273]
Gross’s amendment failed, justice remains
delayed and American tax payers continue to support the Ethnocratic State of
Israel which has reaped a more violent and insecure planet for innocent
civilians.
On May 28, 1993 Ariel Sharon explained:
“The terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ are totally absent from the Declaration
of Independence. This is not an accident. The intention of Zionism was not to
bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in
Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and to the
Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew of the Diaspora has the right to
immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen of Israel.”
In “An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming
Israel” by Professor Jeff Halper, American Israeli and
co-founder and coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions explained:
“An ethnocracy is the opposite of a democracy, although it might incorporate
some elements of democracy such as universal citizenship and elections. It
arises when one particular group-the Jews in Israel, the Russians in Russia,
the Protestants in pre-1972 Northern Ireland, the whites in apartheid South
Africa, the Shi’ite Muslims in Iran, the Malay in Malaysia and, if they had
their way, the white Christian fundamentalists in the US-seize control of the
government and armed forces in order to enforce a regime of exclusive privilege
over other groups in what is in fact a multi-ethnic or multi-religious society.
Ethnocracy, or ethno-nationalism, privileges ethnos over demos, whereby one’s
ethnic affiliation, be it defined by race, descent, religion, language or
national origin, takes precedence over citizenship in determining to whom a
county actually ‘belongs.’” [Page 74]
“Since the October War in 1973, Washington
has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to
any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S.
economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient
since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140
billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign
assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s entire foreign
aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct
subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when
one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita
income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”[1]
During fiscal year 2007, the Congressional
Research Service’s “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” written by Jeremy M. Sharp,
Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs, [updated January 2, 2008] reported that
the US gave Israel at least $2,500.2 million in 2007. This number does not include
the $137.894 million we spent on joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense projects or
the $1.4 billion in loan guarantees made available to Israel in 2007. [Ibid]
While U.S. economic aid to Israel has been
phased out, it has been replaced with increasing military aid paid for by
American taxpayers with over $3.1 billion annually that go to provide even more
weapons of destruction to one of the most powerful militaries the world has
ever known.
The United States has given more money to
Israel than to any other country, and the “indirect or consequential costs to
the American taxpayer as a result of Washington’s blind support for Israel
exceed by many times the amount of direct U.S. aid to Israel. Some of these
‘indirect or consequential’ costs would include the costs to U.S. manufacturers
of the Arab boycott, the costs to U.S. companies and consumers of the Arab oil
embargo and consequent soaring oil prices as a result of U.S. support for
Israel in the 1973 war, and the costs of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions on
Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. [Ibid]
During the Bush Administration, Israel
killed more than 3,000 Palestinian civilians-including more than 1,000 children
during its December-January war on the Gaza Strip-with U.S. made weapons in
violation of the Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts.
In 2007, the United States Government agreed
to increase military aid to Israel by 25% over the next decade, totaling $30
billion.
“In May 2009, President Obama sent his
FY2010 budget request to Congress which includes $2.775 billion in military aid
for Israel, an increase of $225 million from this year’s budget. The budget
request will go to the Senate and House Appropriations Subcommittees on State,
Foreign Operations, and Related Programs for hearings and “mark-ups”.
“This request for an increase in military
aid to Israel comes despite the fact that Israel consistently misuses U.S.
weapons in violation of the Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts.”
[2]
The Pentagon dismantled the spy ship program
in 1968, but LIBERTY survivors and supporters continue to pursue justice.
June 8, 1967, will forever remain a day of
infamy because it was the first time in history that the US NAVY was delayed
from coming to the aid of an American Ship under attack. Although, planes were
launched from the USS SARATOGA, but the Secretary of Defense called them back
because President Johnson did not want to “embarrass an ally.”
I also contend LBJ knew Israel was a Nuclear Power, but his girlfriend Mathilde
Krim, who was twenty years his junior, blonde Italian and a Irgun operative was
a frequent guest at the LBJ Ranch as well as the White House and, “On the night
that the Six-Day Land Grab began, Mathilde was enjoying a sleepover in the
Johnson White House. But for that Zionist aggression, would Israel have been
able to live peacefully with its neighbors? Israel and its supporters staged an
elaborate charade to recast this provocation as defensive. That ruse included
the cover-up of an Israeli assault on the U.S.S. Liberty that killed 34
Americans and left 175 wounded.”
USS
LIBERTY Vets and Acts of Congress
Israel paid minimal compensation to the
families of the crew and six million for damages to the unarmed spy ship, which
in fact should have exceeded 40 million.
Israel has never acknowledged that the
attack was premeditated and instead, blamed the victims.
George Ball was undersecretary of State
under JFK and LBJ who not only called for an early end to America’s War on
Vietnam, he also believed
our policy of underwriting all of Israel’s actions in the Middle East was
detrimental to America’s interests.
In 1992, Ball wrote his last book: “The
Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel” and noted:
“The LIBERTY’S presence and function were known to Israel’s leaders. They
presumably thought it vital that the LIBERTY be prevented from informing Washington
of their intention to violate any cease-fire before they had completed their
occupation of the Golan.
“The ultimate lesson of the LIBERTY attack had far more effect on policy in
Israel than in America. Israel’s leaders concluded that nothing they might do
would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal. If America’s leaders did
not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American
citizens, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away
with almost anything.”
More recently, Admiral Moorer, General Raymond
Davis, Rear Admiral Staring, Ambassador James Akins and others have come forth
stating the attack was deliberate. They all asked for a new Court of Inquiry be
convened by the Department of the Navy with Congressional oversight, to
thoroughly investigate the attack on the USS LIBERTY, which is the only way
justice can be rendered to the survivors.
Admiral Moorer and his distinguished
colleagues also called for June 8th to be known as “USS LIBERTY Remembrance
Day, in order to commemorate the Liberty’s heroic crew”.
IF I had been elected I would have written a House Resolution to establish every
June 8th to be “USS LIBERTY Remembrance Day” and request a transparent Naval Court
of Inquiry into that day in infamy and invite all LIBERTY survivors to speak on
the Congressional record, because courage comes from conscience-- but at least I was able to raise awareness on the ABC affiliate in
Orlando:
Eileen Fleming (NPA) - U.S. House District 5 REMEMBER THE LIBERTY
Sources:
"THE ATTACK ON THE LIBERTY: The Untold Story
of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship" by James Scott. Simon &
Schuster, June 2009.
1. http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html
2. http://endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=2002
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