The Day Israel Attacked America June 08 1967 the height of the 6-day war… the USS Liberty/ an American spy ship had just been attacked... by Israeli jets/ naval torpedo boats while in international waters... off the coast of Egypt… badly damaged… 2/3 of its crew were dead or wounded… as soon as the news reached Washington... the attack on the Liberty instantly triggered a domestic political crisis… according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act... one solution suggested in American circles was to sink the Liberty... so journalists could not photograph it… inflame public opinion against the Israelis… the NSA rejected this idea with an impolite comment… handling the media became the top priority… “my name is Patricia Blue Roushakes… my husband was killed on the Liberty… I was taken to my home in White Oak Maryland… by the time I got there… there were any number of people from the National Security Agency there… they were there to make sure that I did not speak to anyone from the press… I did not… they stayed night/ day…” back in the Mediterranean the Liberty was now listing at 10°… a massive hole in the hull above/ below the water line… Dave Lucas: “the planes that they said they were sending to us never arrived…” Lloyd Painter: “what I was afraid of… I think what most of us were afraid of… was that we were going to sink…” Jim Smith: “the mess decks were pretty much littered with the wounded…” Lloyd Painter: “it was like something out of a horror movie… with people standing around or lying… the wounded/ the dead… stunned… heads missing… parts of their bodies…” the Liberty had only one doctor on board with very limited medical resources… Jim Smith: “there was not a table that was not being used with a wounded body on it…” the doctor fixed compound fractures… treated bullet/ shrapnel wounds… while blood transfusions were given arm to arm… John Scott: “it was real bad…” Dave Lucas: “the doctor said to him… ‘do you want me to operate?... you probably are going to die if I do it… you will certainly die if I do not…’ “he said… ‘go ahead doctor…’ “when the doctor operated we held him as tight as we could… it was horrible pain I am sure for him… all of a sudden he went limp… he died right there…” John Scott: “I do not ever want to see anything like that again…”
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 21:08:07 +0000
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