For a long time I have been interested in the stories of those who operated in the top tier of history but weren’t themselves rulers. Many were diplomats whose careers, for all their brilliant efforts, ended in disappointment. One was Sergei Witte, the long-serving finance minister who spent six months as the first prime minister of Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II. Witte’s memoirs were published in America in 1921, five years after his death. They contain a brief but vivid portrait—at once sweet and grudging—of the America he encountered in August 1905.
And later in the article,
He visited “sky-scrapers,” taking an elevator up 37 floors in one such “monster.” “There was a light breeze blowing and I could feel the top room swaying.” America was expensive: “You cannot give the elevator boy a tip less than a dollar.” He couldn’t believe most of the waiters in hotels and restaurants were university students who were “not ashamed of the menial duties.” Russian youths would rather starve “than demean themselves by doing the work of a servant.” Young women, even from good families, went strolling with young men unaccompanied on the streets and in the parks. This left him “shocked.”
Barton Swaim’s Weekend Interview is with Beatrice de Graaf, professor of history at Utrecht University, and author of Putin’s Czarist Dream.
He had taken power on the last day of 1999, when Boris Yeltsin resigned. “Every year, one or two or three statues were erected. But they didn’t honor Lenin or Stalin. The statues were of Alexander I, of Peter the Great, of Catherine, of Nicholas I.”
Any time Mr. Putin would dedicate one of these statues, Ms. de Graaf recalls observing, “he would do it in the company of an Orthodox priest, and the priest would sprinkle holy water and make an address, and both the priest and Putin speak of the ‘holiness of the moment’ or some language like that. . . . To me, it became obvious this wasn’t only about history.”
And later,
“For him,” Ms. de Graaf says, “the war in Ukraine really is a holy war.” She also points out that while “in Western Christianity, St. Augustine formulated an influential theory of just war, nothing of the sort developed in Eastern Christianity. In the East, the emperor has the power to define what is evil and crush it.”
It’s a long and complicated interview. Churchill’s description of Russia’s intentions still seems valid – a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
D-Day.
The best job I ever had was working as senior editor and writer for the publishing arm of the Cantigny First Division Museum in Wheaton, IL. In that capacity I edited and wrote several books and articles on 1st Infantry Division history and related subjects. This was back when a great many WW2 Big Red One vets were still alive. Met and spoke with many of them, conducted oral history interviews, wrote about their experiences, etc.
One of my best memories was being party to (and recording and documenting) the friendly but ever-vigorous (and never-ending) debate on who exactly was first to make it to the top of the bluff at Omaha Beach. The two prime candidates were Finke and Dawson. But there were others, most of them unknown or known but to God — anonymous junior officers, sergeants, corporals, and privates who on their own initiative and acting without any orders or guidance formed small ad hoc groups and fought way to the top in the teeth of withering German machine-gun fire.
Those of you who have toured Omaha Beach will no doubt remember seeing “Dawson’s Draw,” the shallow pathway leading up the slope of the bluff to its summit. The draw is located adjacent to the American cemetery.
A special advanced private screening of “Saving Private Ryan” was held at the Cantigny Museum for a select group of Big Red One vets of the Omaha Beach assault. They were unanimous in their approval of the opening segment depicting the assault, even though the anti-boat boat obstacles were incorrectly positioned, facing the wrong way. They found this part of the film quite harrowing o watch, and not a few were moved to tears by it.
Their only significant complaint about the film was the scene in which Capt. Miller and his men are shown strolling casually and fairly closely bunched through the Normandy countryside (whose ownership was then still very much in dispute), chatting amiably as if without a care in the world.
I got to talk with Capt. Finke about Omaha Beach. He was very adamant, literally until his dying day, that he was “first to the top” of the bluff, beating Dawson.
RIP, men.
This woman in 2022 launched a Title ix investigation of three middle school boys for refusing to use the ‘preferred pronouns’ of another student. The Wisconsin Institute of Law and LIberty sued and got her to back down.
== https://www.linkedin.com/in/deb-sixel-699230241
Wow IrishOtter49, I know that museum well and have visited many times, usually dragging my kids along – hopefully it had some impact.
Regarding Omaha Beach, there have been dozens of documentaries, one scene of one of them has stuck with me, maybe you know it. A surviving German soldier is interviewed, one of the guys in the machine gun nests. One question had something to do with strategy or tactics of the invading (U.S.) forces. His answer made my blood run cold. He said something like, “The invasion succeeded because we couldn’t kill them fast enough.”
Any time Mr. Putin would dedicate one of these statues, Ms. de Graaf recalls observing, “he would do it in the company of an Orthodox priest, and the priest would sprinkle holy water and make an address, and both the priest and Putin speak of the ‘holiness of the moment’ or some language like that. . . . To me, it became obvious this wasn’t only about history.”
–quoted by Mike Plaiss
_________________________________
Lest it be forgotten, the Russian feminist punk band, Pussy Riot, opposed the cozy relationship between Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church.
It was their 2012 protest at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral that got them arrested and sentenced to two years of forced labor for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
Some fled the country; some served time. It was bad PR for Putin, so they eventually got amnesty, but the band and its organization were permanently criminalized.
I probably don’t agree with Pussy Riot on most things, but I remember watching footage of them in Red Square and being horrified. Putin, and Russian authorities in general, don’t play around.
Mike Plaiss:
Thanks for your comment. I hadn’t heard that story from the German veteran. It is indeed chilling, and correct. He might, however, have added:
”Churchill’s description of Russia’s intentions still seems valid – a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
There is no riddle, mystery, or enigma about it. Russia’s intentions are to 1) resurrect the Russian empire, 2) expand Russia’s borders westward to a shorter, more defensible line, and 3) establish a buffer between itself and the West.
After Ukraine, Moldova, and eastern Romania will come the Baltics and eastern Poland, then Finland. We’ve known this since February 2022, but some people just don’t want to admit it.
Churchill was speaking about predicting specific Russian actions, particularly in the light of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact):
____________________________________
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
It cannot be in accordance with the interest or the safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea, or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of South-Eastern Europe. That would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia.”
The Pact seemed paradoxical, given the mutual enmity between the Nazis and the Communists. Churchill was reframing it in terms of Russia holding an Eastern buffer zone to Germany.
Of course, the arrangement was unstable and it was only a matter of time before one betrayed the other. Germany got there first.
After Ukraine, Moldova, and eastern Romania will come the Baltics and eastern Poland, then Finland. We’ve known this since February 2022, but some people just don’t want to admit it.
It seems mkent has been listening to Peter Zeihan. I think Z is basically right on that point.
Keith:
You are being disingenuous, being you just did bring up Pollard and the USS Liberty. The USS Liberty incident has been explained over and over as an error, and there was a good reason the error was made. You almost certainly know that. See the link.
As for Pollard, he was an unfortunate one-off, and although he was committing espionage, Israel itself was – and remains – basically friendly to the US and vice versa:
After Pollard’s release, the former deputy chief of the Mossad Ram Ben Barak publicly regretted Pollard, saying that the recruitment and operation “were unknown by the intelligence leadership and unauthorized” with the resultant damage to the US-Israeli relationship far outweighing the value of the intelligence Pollard provided. “Our entire relationship with the US deteriorated because of this. People lost jobs over it”, according to Barak. “It made for years and years of suspicion, with Americans suspecting he wasn’t the only one, and feeling that they hadn’t gotten the necessary explanations. They didn’t believe it wasn’t authorized. It caused huge, huge damage. They saw it as a betrayal of them.”
The Tucker and Owens wing love to bring up these two incidents as though they are typical or meaningful, which they are not.
There is no riddle, mystery, or enigma about it. Russia’s intentions are to 1) resurrect the Russian empire, 2) expand Russia’s borders westward to a shorter, more defensible line, and 3) establish a buffer between itself and the West.
==
When I was young, I was infatuated with Midori Ito, Ally Sheedy, the daughter of the newspaper publisher who lived one street over, a dame working in my office, and the secretary of a friend of mine. I was zero for five. Some ‘intentions’ are more likely to come to fruition than others.
The pollard story is very curious in part because of one detail that has been referred in some places about what the some of information he was leaking to mossad
About monzer al kassar a syrian arms dealer operating out of spain who was arming various palestinian factions including the achille lauro perpetrator but he was trading east bloc weapons
The interesting part was some of these weapons ended up with the nicaraguan resistance, harder to trace as us sources
Mon kassar was eventually caught in a sting operation some twenty years later
Thinking he was supplying colombian guerillas
Now the source for the earlier tidbit about the intel is a dodgy figure but who isnt in intelligence
”It seems mkent has been listening to Peter Zeihan.”
Actually, on this issue I’ve been listening to the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.
On 24 Feb 2022, the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine (launched from his country), Lukashenko briefed his national security council on Russia’s plans, complete with maps. Afterward he then called in the press for a limited briefing, but no one covered the maps. After some reporters asked questions about the maps, he went into more detail.
He explained that the invasion of Ukraine was the southern thrust to take the entirety of the countries of Ukraine and Moldova. It was to be followed by a “northern” (his term) thrust through Belarus to take the Baltics and eastern Poland. This plan was confirmed about a month later by the deputy commander of Russia’s central military district (roughly equivalent to our CENTCOM).
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s been official Russian doctrine for over 200 years. Being familiar with that doctrine, I know that the southern and central thrusts will be followed by the true northern thrust to take Finland. The Finns know it too, which is why they voted to join NATO by a 2-1 margin.
Incidentally, I was first introduced to Peter Zeihan’s YouTube site after explaining this to an acquaintance of mine, who told me “You sound just like Peter Zeihan.” “Peter who?”
Peter Zeihan gets this topic right because he knows Russian doctrine and history and listens to what the Russians say. But anyone can do that, and for those who do Russia’s actions are no mystery at all.
Its important to under stand the motivation of our adversaries even if we disagree
When the ayatollah or bin laden told us what they were going to do we dismissed because thats not what we think
Kruschev said ‘we will bury you’ in his blunt stylings his successors tried
Now Putin doesnf have the resources to pull off these
grand schemes now
He was only encouraged by the weakness of the autopen regime that was installed that fumbled in kabul catastrophically
Our contra temps in the gulf are not like that
A fictional example
Colonel phillips (about the red skulls ambition)
You know thats insane
Zola its is of no consequence
Because he can do it
Irish, are you aware of the Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours site? Great tours. Every Sun two Historians (well one Historian with a degree) host a Podcast featuring an author of a book. The book is discussed, and watchers on FB or YT can ask questions. This Sunday is a 90 min. presentation on DDay.
And four years on conventional wisdom about the inevitable victory of Roosia’s mighty armed forces has completely fallen apart.
It isn’t over yet but Vladdy isn’t winning.
Military ambitions vs. the opportunity for corruption in authoritarian/totalitarian regimes: it seems clear that corruption really backfired on the Russian military capabilities, possibly hindered the Ukrainian responses, and may still be a problem for the CCP (water in missiles instead of propellant, etc.??). And we can hope, in Iran and the IRGC as well??
Which makes the stories about the levels of corruption (in various state managed welfare programs, the poor or nonexistent federal auditing or oversight, and the slush funding via NGO’s of the Dem Party or related Leftist organizations) raises a significant concern that we do not have any of that in the defense procurement side of things. It appears our current military operations are fully meeting or exceeding desired expectations, so the prospects of finding meaningful corruption or fraud in those past or upcoming materiel, armament, or systems replacements is probably low. As a retiree from defense contractor employment, I know we had period governmental agency audits. But Art Deco’s comments about the iron triangle suggests not all options for skullduggery have been closed off.
Reading some pundits these days is almost as much fun as reading fiction — but it’s all true!
The “political suspense thriller” is in the latter half of the post.
…
how a CIA officer allegedly dreamed up a fake doomsday spy program to finance a literal dragon’s hoard — 303 gold bars, $2 million in cash, and 35 luxury watches, presumably so he’d always know precisely when his pension was due; how Senate Democrats got so upset about Bill Pulte that they raised the drawbridge on their own beloved FISA spy powers, which now expire next Friday; and how Trump just handed Pulte a battering ram, pointed him at ODNI’s gates, and suggested he release everything about 2020 on his way through. Major dot connecting.
Don Surbers’ week-end round-up is worth a visit just for the graphic illustrating the first item.
Thanks for the heads-up/link to the Ambrose Tours site. I’ll definitely check it out.
BTW, I edited a paper by Ambrose which he presented at a Cantigny conference on D-Day. Appeared in a conference proceedings book published by Cantigny, which I also wrote for and edited. Several telephone conversations with Ambrose about editing matters. Nice guy.
Well McNamara and the Liberty veterans association do not agree with the findings. I guess we all get to decide who to believe.
Jonathon Pollard seriously damaged American interests. People like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson might make a big deal about that, but so did people like Joseph Lieberman, not known to be an antisemite.
Pollard has been given Israeli citizenship, and a government pension, and people in Israel name things after him. More than one Israeli Prime Minister personally intervened on his behalf, including Netanyahu. One-off, maybe, but let’s not minimize the issue.
It’s true that we spy on Israel, Israel spies on us, that’s as it should be. But what Jonathon Pollard did was not same-old same-old, and by his own words is an American traitor to the United States, a thing much worse than an Israeli spying on us for Israel. I am not going to quote his own words because they sound too much like something that Jews are accused of believing by antisemites.
I understand that lots of American Jews and Israelis think he was hard done by, and were not trying to help him out of bad motives, but there are any number of bad people who somehow get good people working to help them, usually by someone telling lots of lies on their behalf.
@Keith
I’ve been meaning to get to you for a while since I’ve been dealing with other stuff but I’ve seen you pop up like a bad penny. Sometimes with decent takes, often times not. Especially when anything coming up with Israel appears, and your tendency to launder bad faith bullshit amd condescend to anyone who contradicts you as an “Israel Firster.” I am pro-Israel but not an Israel Firster, as we’ll see.
However in addition to being disingenious, you also seem to be vastly less intelligent and aware than you think you are, as we’re going to discuss in a bit.
Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say
Firstly: Let’s note the source. NBC. Since when did we start uncritically trusting these people? Especially since they have managed the rare feat of burying the lede in the url itself.
Secondly: “Sources say.”
So who the farq are these sources? Because it definitely isn’t all of the sources, as the article itself notes.
A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement that it is “completely false” that Israel spies on the U.S. “Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone US government officials,” the spokesperson said. “Israel intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated.”
The Pentagon declined to comment.
A White House official said in a statement, “This entire story is false and sourced to someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of what’s going on.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees all the U.S. intelligence agencies including the DIA, did not respond to a request for comment.
Now a few pointers here.
A: The Israeli statement is a bullshit lie in at least a couple provable cases. Israeli intelligence collection efforts are targeted against both enemies and allies as well as neutrals, as we’ve been many times before, and like all competent intel orgs are doing, including the US’s (which is one reason why people like you rarely make mention of it goign the other way around). I condemn the Israeli Embassy for making such an obvious lie, and it’s worth establishing before you try and peddle “Israel Firster” nonsense on me.
But while they’re lying about the scope of Israeli intelligence collection on its allies and neutrals, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lying about this being false.
B: Literally every source in a position of authority able to be quoted and named has denied this or not commented. Every single one. If you were as aware or knowledgeable as you hold yourself to be, this might have struck you as a problem, especially coming from an avowedly hostile outlet that would love to sabotage whatever Trump is doing.
So let’s go to the sources.
The Pentagon is increasingly concerned about Israel ramping up its spying on the U.S., recently raising the counterintelligence threat level from America’s top ally in the Middle East to the highest level, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official.
So uh, who are these “officials and former official?” Who are their names? Do we have any evidence they are who they say they are, let alone that they are true? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
To those of us keeping score at home, this is a similar hit record to things like the “Losers” smear about Trump not visiting the Belleau Wood Graves and which later was confirmably proven to be bogus (as well as being contradictory to Trump’s attitude towards military dead on basically every other case AND self-evidently illogical since the Allied troops that laid down their lives at Belleau WON).
So why oh why are you so quick to jump on this? Would you if this non-story were about – say – Russia, the PRC, North Korea, Iran, or he like?
Forgive me if I express my doubts.
And yes, that is what it is. A non-story leaning on non-sources, where three times nothing amounts to nothing. Which is damning when knowledge isn’t only about what you know, but what you can PROVE you know.
And neither you, NBC, or their supposedly-very-real-and-honest-and-totally-not-either-sock-puppets-or-lying “three sources” can’t prove jackshit about this case, including and up to that it is even true. Which is why I quietly resent having my time wasted looking over this and regard it as little better than a troll. And while I concur with Neo that you are being disingenious I do think that in this case you weren’t INTENTIONALLY Being disingenious on the whole, you just saw “Israel” and “Pentagon Raises” from somewhere – Anywhere- and you salivated like Pavlov’s Dog, not doing even the fraction of a second of time or consideration to ask yourself some basic questions.
Like
A: “Is there any way I can prove that this source is telling the truth? Or even exists?”
B: “Does NBC have a track record of honest or accurate reporting, especially about Trump?”
C: “When I say this is current, can I actually prove that it is current, or even ever was a thing?”
D: “Does this make me look bad – or like a hateful, irrational idiot – if I either cannot prove A through C after making claims based on that?”
The answer to all of these is not flattering.
Now, for the sake of the argument, does this sound like it might be a thing that COULD be true? Sure, maybe. At least it isn’t the BS “Belleau Wood Losers” nonsense that was patently absurd on its face on basically every level. I called the Israeli Embassy out for lying in this article by pointing out that their intelligence collection efforts can and do target friendly and neutral entities as well as enemies, and while for various reasons I suspect that the Iran War has those efforts de-emphasized due to the sheer tempo of hunting down “Resistance Bloc” leadership and trying to help friendly elements that they’ll have less time to do stuff like tap US phones or listen to the taps they do have, I have to concede that A: The chances they’d completely stop what intel gathering they have set up already is basically nil, and B: The aforementioned is just a Suspicion of mine, and one I openly admit and concede is such.
(See Keith, this is how one addresses stuff one suspects but cannot prove).
Moreover, the premise of the Non-News is that they are trying to gather intelligence on what Trump’s peace plans or diplomatic maneuvers regarding Iran are for. Which is eminently believable unlike Trump calling the dead that won Belleau Wood “losers.” So while still ultimately non-news and a case of NBC trying to signal boost a three times nothing is still nothing story denied or no comment’d by every source able to actually be held publicly responsible for such a comment, it at least shows that some of the slugs at NBC at a minimum thought of a coherent lie. Which is a step up from their typical offerings.
We had a discussion several days ago about our GREAT FRIEND Israel. I mentioned that countries don’t have friend ,
Firstly: the idea that countries don’t have friends is the kind of midwit pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-realist drivel that gave Kissinger and co their unwarranted fame. Countries in aggregate absolutely can and do have friends, as anyone who has looked over the history of Hungary and Poland for the past 500 some years or China and Korea before about the 1800s could attest, in much the same way they can and do have enemies (see: China and basically every polity to emerge from either the Steppe or Siberia, Greece and Turkey).
This does not mean that these countries will never conflict with each other. After all Poland and Hungary fought on opposite sides of WWII (though I note the Hungarians were quite generous in how they treated with Poland such as giving Polish forces in 1939 safe passage to retreat to Romania, and that during the Warsaw Uprising several Hungarian rear echelon troops serving alongside the Germans refused to partake in fighting and many defected to join the doomed Polish underground fighters), and China and Korea have several times over. And of course strictly speaking “countries” do not act or hold attitudes, they are collections of various people, some in power, some not, some making policy others not, that do act. But this is important because those people in those countries tend to have long patterns of history, cultural tendencies, beliefs, and fondnesses or animosities that together do tend to make a pattern of friendship or foeship that tends to pop up time and again even in areas or times or cases that ostentiably have nothing much to do with one another (ie: why would DeGaulle care so much about Biafra or what the British thought about it?).
Again that does not mean “friend” countries or everyone in them can or should be trusted, any more than it means that “foe” countries can never be beneficial to deal with. But it does mean the patterns are real and not only exist alongside and in some cases transcend national interests, but tend to wind up influencing what said interests are.
And by basically any metric including the financial support to and from both sides Israel and the US would qualify as such a “friend” case, even if we can and do clash and are at cross purposes.
Secondly: Even if we pretended that nations do not have friends only interests (and yes that is ultimately something we PRETEND) that ignores the basic fact that the Israelis have more incentive than most to stay on the US’s good side, and especially not to tick it off for no reason. While the Israelis do want to become more self-sufficient in large part due to the trauma of having to operate in the aftermath of October 7th while dealing with Obama and Biden’s barely veiled hostility and they’ve had reasons to tweak US interests before like with the Lavon Affair (which unlike the Liberty actually was intentional and criminal, and saw the responsible Minister kicked out) and Pollard (who I’ll get to later) much like we have tweaked them (anyone forget how Trump said he would protect Qatar against another Israeli strike? Bueller?), that doesn’t mean they’re dumb enough to think they do not benefit significantly from relations with the US. And not just materially or financially. The US being the sole semi-reliable veto on the UN going Israel burning is worth noting itself, as is the signficiant population overlap and family relations that people like you tend not to mention except for the dual citizenship in positions of power issue (and for the record I also believe that is unseemly and would be in favor of making those holding some positions of trust renounce one citizenship or another, though I accept that is a lot harder than it looks).
I don’t bring up Pollard ,
I have nothing good to say about Pollard and believe he should have been executed, or failing that not allowed to make Aliyah in favor of spending the rest of his life rotting in prison. It is another reason why while pro-Israel I am not an “Israel Firster” and do not trust them.
or the USS Liberty then ,
The USS Liberty was a classic if horrifying case of friendly fire due to misidentified target. We know this due to a host of sources including NSA Intercepts of Israeli communications during the course of the attack which revealed how they firmly believed it was an Egyptian ship until they didn’t, and were baffled and confused as to why. Notably some scumbags like Ward Boston have tried to suppress this (with Boston in particular briefly putting the audio on his website only to realize that anybody who can understand spoken Hebrew would realize it makes him look like the inflammatory, dishonest idiot he is, resulting in him pulling it down to try and protect his “False Flag” BS) but it remains the truth. The Israelis as a whole had no reason whatsoever to attack a US Navy ship, and none of the usual stated reasons such as “get the US involved in the Six Day War” make sense and often directly contradict Israeli interests and policy at the time (since – unlike during the Lavon Affair, which was evil and stupid for a different reason such as having Israeli assets doing what some of Nasser’s blackshirts would’ve done independently with just some prodding – the Israelis had just won the Six Day War, Egypt was withdrawing across the Canal, and not only would the US intervening in the war not militarily help Israel but it would risk Soviet entry).
In the interests of full disclosure I cannot be 100% sure no Israeli actor involved intended to attack the Liberty. But any such malicious actors would’ve had to have been at the level of the war room (Not the pilots and naval crew that actually carried out the attack, they obviously didn’t know and vocally did not, and the idea that “you can’t miss a big honking American flag” is just bullshit; not at the level of Cabinet or the Knesset), in the form of one or a couple people who decided with malice aforethought to remove the USS Liberty marker and hope that this would result in it being misidentified as a valid target and hit like what actually happened. But while I cannot 100% rule that out in the same way I can rule out bullshit like Ward Boston’s “False Flag” intentional strike thesis, I view this as less likely than not in a war room with personnel that had been going on full bore in high tempo, high intensity, diplomatically and strategically sensitive, existentially important ops for six days if not more, meaning basically everyone involved was exhausted, nerve frayed, and at the point in time where even the best start losing their touch and unavoidably making screwups. And the identity of the Liberty is just the sort of thing that’s likely to fall through the cracks in such a circumstance because it doesn’t seem IMMEDIATELY, VITALLY important at that very second in that very situation from an Israeli POV (and objectively speaking if we’re really damn blunt it’s not) but which is important enough that screwing up will cause major problems. And as we know good, innocent American servicepeople died, Israeli-American relations suffered a significant but not crippling blow, Israel had to apologize and pay restitution, and enemies of both made hay of it.
For what it is worth the Liberty still gets my blood boiling though not for the reason people like you typically cite it, but because I do believe that people should have been jailed over it and do think the Israeli response was less fullsome than ideal. But it’s a far cry from the worst or from the likes of Qatar, the Saudis, or Iran. But I suppose that makes me “Israel Firster.”
But I also want to draw attention to a related incident happening around the same time with around the same technology. The “Battle” of June 15th-18th 1968, which consisted of the US Air Force and to a lesser extent US Navy Aviation striking the Allied American/Australian ships the HMAS Hobart, USS Boston, USS Edison, USS Chandler, and later USS Blandy and USS Theodore E. Chandler and assorted swift boats MULTIPLE Times over the course of SIXTY HOURS, resulting in major, repeated Blue on Blue exchanges of fire and the tragic sinking of the US Swift Boat.
The actual cause turned out to be prolific radar problems, mostly on the F-4 Phantoms, but even then it still baffles me how this happened since it wasn’t like the Communists had naval assets of this quantity or size in Vietnam. The same idiots regarding the Liberty claiming you can’t miss a US Flag for half an hour or so are utterly silent about multiple squadrons of US aviation from two different services not only missing every single friendly flag on that fleet but the basic fact that there was no fleet in Vietnamese waters of that size that would not be allied. If there were any conspiracy theorists this would be grounds to make hay.
But they don’t for a very simple reason. Not even they can come up with even a half-baked reason why this would be intentional, since the only ships involved (America and Australia) were already involved in Vietnam. So this all but inexplicable, protracted, irrational friendly fire set of incidents was obviously unintentional and accidental, precisely because as jaw droppingly horrible as it was there’s no other explanation that holds water or even has any kind of internal scrutiny.
Yet for some reason I never, ever see this get brought up by most of the Liberty baiters like Ward Boston who insist it had to be intentional or that you can’t miss a US Flag (…… at high speeds from the air during strafing runs) over the span of maybe an hour or two.
Israel is not perfect, nor is the US-Israel relationship perfect. I am happy being bluntly candid on that issue, and I support continued cooperation with Israel knowing many of the problems far better than most of its critics. Because not many of our partners in the Middle East would go so far as to arrest their own soldiers for desecrating a Jesus Christ statue, discipline those that did not report it, and replace the statute of their own charge while providing very useful intel on mortal enemies like the Ayatollah. That doesn’t mean they’re not a potential intelligence threat (and I called out the Israeli Embassy for that reason). That doesn’t mean we should trust them or that I’m an Israeli firster.
But it does mean you need to stop being Pavlov’s Dog and rent a clue.
And I just noticed this.
Well McNamara
McNamara’s an idiot with provably subpar judgement.
Moreover even he’s usually been careful to phrase his initial skepticism of the results differently and less concretely than “does not believe.”
and the Liberty veterans association do not agree with the findings.
Except you’ll note that said “veterans association” does not speak for all the Liberty Veterans. And there’s a reason for that. Because it was hijacked by psychopathically dishonest radicals like Ward Boston who purged those that disagreed with them to the extent they could and worked to downplay and muzzle those they could not. And why when you start getting into the issue of the actual anatomies of things Liberty veterans tend not to have fond feelings of Israel (understandably so!) but break down heavily on whether they believe the findings, if they think Israel paid enough, and so on.
You know, like actual humans tend to do.
But the important thing about this is not what the “veterans association” or any given Liberty veteran agrees with, it’s what the facts are.
And the facts are that we have Hebrew audio intercepts from the Israelis that actually attacked the Liberty showing they had absolutely no clue they were striking a US Ship, which is verified by the transcription. Moreover most of the bullshitters like you claiming intentionality have no fucking workable theory of the crime and in about half a century afterwards have made no headway into trying to identify possible culprits for this if it was intentional.
You’ll note I actually did posit a workable theory of crime, albeit an extremely marginal one. I identified the possible vector for a bad actor trying to get the Liberty attacked to being one or more of the Israeli personnel in the war room in a position to “misplace” the USS Liberty marker and thus nudge it towards being identified as a legitimate target. I pointed out how identifying a possible bad actor elsewhere does not work since the actual triggermen did not know and provably did not given the audio intercepts. I pointed out how identifying ones above in the Cabinet or Knesset did not work given their avowed interest in courting US support and desire to wind down combat operations ASAP and not widen the war (the exact opposite of what idiots like Boston claim they would want in a USS Liberty False Flag Theory).
I also pointed out how this is an unlikely theory reliant upon trying to indirectly influence an attack and hope things played out the way they did, and the more likely explanation is sheer exhaustion and distraction from a week or so of high intensity, high stress operations.
There is no alternative evidence. There is no alternative explanation. Ward Boston and his scumbag kin indirectly admitted to this when they briefly put up the USS Liberty Hebrew audio intercepts without realizing how bad it made them look, and admitted it again when they took it down.
I guess we all get to decide who to believe.
No, no you do not.
Because “who to believe” does not matter in this case so much as WHAT to believe.
And the fact remains there is only one legitimate set of audio logs from the Liberty Attack.
The fact remains that the HMAS Hobart shows that what Boston and co claimed could not happen in a mistaken ID case can happen.
As neo said, Keith is disingeneous about Israel, again.
The poorest of the poor buying weapons for Israel. – Keith
@om
He’s disingenuous, but I think it goes beyond that. He legitimately seems to have no idea how badly putting forth a “sources say” article from NBC makes him look.
Trump: “What I would suggest to Iran: You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough. Get back to the table and make a deal.”
Pathetic
sdferr,
I just saw that. And Trump told Israel not to respond. I’m sorry, but Trump has lost all credibility with me. When your only real ally gets attacked and you tell them to stand down, plus you dont go after the aggressors just because you want a “deal”?
There’s no excuse any more. To hell with what the Saudis et al are worried about. Time to deal with this.
Beats shouting at clouds, I guess?
Random musings. What does Iran hope to accomplish with this? Maintaining the appearance of strength to those they lord over? Maybe. Driving a wedge between Israel and the U.S.? Or is it just to make Trump look foolish. Whatever the reason they had to expect retaliation, and evidently they don’t fear it. That itself suggests we’re doing this wrong.
If Trump were to be intentionally aiming to see to it Netanyahu can’t be reelected in the fall, I’m not sure what he’d be doing differently: is where this is going to in my mind, bad places for everyone concerned.
Well, if Trump has a good strategy he isn’t explaining it well. He is looking weak and I would have thought he wouldn’t allow that to happen.
Tamir Morag:
The biggest problem with Trump’s request for Netanyahu to wait a few days and then attack together if there is no deal, is that in the end, there might actually be a deal.
If that happens, Israel will be stuck with a loophole-ridden agreement that saves the Iranian regime and fails to address all the threats. All of this after Israel failed to respond to a ballistic missile attack on its territory, which occurred without Israel even attacking Iran in the first place.
The second worst scenario is repeated delays by Trump and the Iranians, with more and more promises to “wait just a few more days because the deal is just around the corner.”
If, on the other hand, there is a powerful joint response by Israel and the US within a few days, the short wait is a price worth paying.
The problem is, there is absolutely no such certainty.
I hadn’t seen your 6/2026 02:29 PM fisking of Keith on my smartphone when I commented at 02:45 that Keith was disingenuous, again.
Thorough and well done!
Hope the job search is going well.
Selfy:
And nobody knows they are dogs (robo canids).
Keep in mind, if possible, that we’re all STILL speculating…
(To be sure, that’s what people do; but WE DO NOT KNOW how this will play out…even if we’re hot for certainties….)
– – – – – –
…Having said that, here’s something from the “Lest There Be Any Doubt” File, (“Nothing Really New” Section):
So here’s a question: can the Neo-Ottomans decide unilaterally that they need to borrow a nuke or two (oh, say, just on principle)?
Break out the Turkish delight…?
IOW, Trump’s injunctions to Netanyahu MAY be merely street theater.
We don’t know.
(We CAN’T know…until the smoke clears and/or it all plays out.)
– – – – – – –
FWIW, here’s another example of clarity from Amine Ayoub:
“Israel Under Fire: Iran’s missile barrage shatters fragile calm as proxies test the limits;
“Context is essential: Israel strikes back. Its actions arise from survival imperatives after years of rockets, tunnels, and massacres, not from unprovoked aggression…”— https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/428293
Lots of great stuff in the WSJ this weekend, including this by Peggy Noonan. She really is at her best when she just lays off the politics altogether.
A Visit to America in 1905
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/a-visit-to-america-in-1905-f8af2328?st=eiscjW
And later in the article,
I believe the link above gets by the paywall.
Speaking of Russia,
Why U.S. Presidents Misjudge Putin
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/why-u-s-presidents-misjudge-putin-0ac5d9d9?st=yEtedc
Barton Swaim’s Weekend Interview is with Beatrice de Graaf, professor of history at Utrecht University, and author of Putin’s Czarist Dream.
And later,
It’s a long and complicated interview. Churchill’s description of Russia’s intentions still seems valid – a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
D-Day.
The best job I ever had was working as senior editor and writer for the publishing arm of the Cantigny First Division Museum in Wheaton, IL. In that capacity I edited and wrote several books and articles on 1st Infantry Division history and related subjects. This was back when a great many WW2 Big Red One vets were still alive. Met and spoke with many of them, conducted oral history interviews, wrote about their experiences, etc.
One of my best memories was being party to (and recording and documenting) the friendly but ever-vigorous (and never-ending) debate on who exactly was first to make it to the top of the bluff at Omaha Beach. The two prime candidates were Finke and Dawson. But there were others, most of them unknown or known but to God — anonymous junior officers, sergeants, corporals, and privates who on their own initiative and acting without any orders or guidance formed small ad hoc groups and fought way to the top in the teeth of withering German machine-gun fire.
Those of you who have toured Omaha Beach will no doubt remember seeing “Dawson’s Draw,” the shallow pathway leading up the slope of the bluff to its summit. The draw is located adjacent to the American cemetery.
A special advanced private screening of “Saving Private Ryan” was held at the Cantigny Museum for a select group of Big Red One vets of the Omaha Beach assault. They were unanimous in their approval of the opening segment depicting the assault, even though the anti-boat boat obstacles were incorrectly positioned, facing the wrong way. They found this part of the film quite harrowing o watch, and not a few were moved to tears by it.
Their only significant complaint about the film was the scene in which Capt. Miller and his men are shown strolling casually and fairly closely bunched through the Normandy countryside (whose ownership was then still very much in dispute), chatting amiably as if without a care in the world.
I got to talk with Capt. Finke about Omaha Beach. He was very adamant, literally until his dying day, that he was “first to the top” of the bluff, beating Dawson.
RIP, men.
This woman in 2022 launched a Title ix investigation of three middle school boys for refusing to use the ‘preferred pronouns’ of another student. The Wisconsin Institute of Law and LIberty sued and got her to back down.
==
https://www.linkedin.com/in/deb-sixel-699230241
Wow IrishOtter49, I know that museum well and have visited many times, usually dragging my kids along – hopefully it had some impact.
Regarding Omaha Beach, there have been dozens of documentaries, one scene of one of them has stuck with me, maybe you know it. A surviving German soldier is interviewed, one of the guys in the machine gun nests. One question had something to do with strategy or tactics of the invading (U.S.) forces. His answer made my blood run cold. He said something like, “The invasion succeeded because we couldn’t kill them fast enough.”
Any time Mr. Putin would dedicate one of these statues, Ms. de Graaf recalls observing, “he would do it in the company of an Orthodox priest, and the priest would sprinkle holy water and make an address, and both the priest and Putin speak of the ‘holiness of the moment’ or some language like that. . . . To me, it became obvious this wasn’t only about history.”
–quoted by Mike Plaiss
_________________________________
Lest it be forgotten, the Russian feminist punk band, Pussy Riot, opposed the cozy relationship between Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church.
It was their 2012 protest at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral that got them arrested and sentenced to two years of forced labor for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
Some fled the country; some served time. It was bad PR for Putin, so they eventually got amnesty, but the band and its organization were permanently criminalized.
I probably don’t agree with Pussy Riot on most things, but I remember watching footage of them in Red Square and being horrified. Putin, and Russian authorities in general, don’t play around.
Mike Plaiss:
Thanks for your comment. I hadn’t heard that story from the German veteran. It is indeed chilling, and correct. He might, however, have added:
“And they wouldn’t stop coming.”
We had a discussion several days ago about our GREAT FRIEND Israel. I mentioned that countries don’t have friend , I don’t bring up Pollard ,or the USS Liberty then ,but this is current .
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-raised-threat-israeli-spying-us-highest-level-sources-say-rcna348565
”Churchill’s description of Russia’s intentions still seems valid – a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
There is no riddle, mystery, or enigma about it. Russia’s intentions are to 1) resurrect the Russian empire, 2) expand Russia’s borders westward to a shorter, more defensible line, and 3) establish a buffer between itself and the West.
After Ukraine, Moldova, and eastern Romania will come the Baltics and eastern Poland, then Finland. We’ve known this since February 2022, but some people just don’t want to admit it.
Churchill was speaking about predicting specific Russian actions, particularly in the light of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact):
____________________________________
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
It cannot be in accordance with the interest or the safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea, or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of South-Eastern Europe. That would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia.”
–Winston Churchill, (October 1, 1939)
https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-150/churchill-on-russia/
____________________________________
The Pact seemed paradoxical, given the mutual enmity between the Nazis and the Communists. Churchill was reframing it in terms of Russia holding an Eastern buffer zone to Germany.
Of course, the arrangement was unstable and it was only a matter of time before one betrayed the other. Germany got there first.
After Ukraine, Moldova, and eastern Romania will come the Baltics and eastern Poland, then Finland. We’ve known this since February 2022, but some people just don’t want to admit it.
It seems mkent has been listening to Peter Zeihan. I think Z is basically right on that point.
Keith:
You are being disingenuous, being you just did bring up Pollard and the USS Liberty. The USS Liberty incident has been explained over and over as an error, and there was a good reason the error was made. You almost certainly know that. See the link.
As for Pollard, he was an unfortunate one-off, and although he was committing espionage, Israel itself was – and remains – basically friendly to the US and vice versa:
The Tucker and Owens wing love to bring up these two incidents as though they are typical or meaningful, which they are not.
There is no riddle, mystery, or enigma about it. Russia’s intentions are to 1) resurrect the Russian empire, 2) expand Russia’s borders westward to a shorter, more defensible line, and 3) establish a buffer between itself and the West.
==
When I was young, I was infatuated with Midori Ito, Ally Sheedy, the daughter of the newspaper publisher who lived one street over, a dame working in my office, and the secretary of a friend of mine. I was zero for five. Some ‘intentions’ are more likely to come to fruition than others.
A larger picture
https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2063287799613178079
The pollard story is very curious in part because of one detail that has been referred in some places about what the some of information he was leaking to mossad
About monzer al kassar a syrian arms dealer operating out of spain who was arming various palestinian factions including the achille lauro perpetrator but he was trading east bloc weapons
The interesting part was some of these weapons ended up with the nicaraguan resistance, harder to trace as us sources
Mon kassar was eventually caught in a sting operation some twenty years later
Thinking he was supplying colombian guerillas
Now the source for the earlier tidbit about the intel is a dodgy figure but who isnt in intelligence
”It seems mkent has been listening to Peter Zeihan.”
Actually, on this issue I’ve been listening to the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.
On 24 Feb 2022, the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine (launched from his country), Lukashenko briefed his national security council on Russia’s plans, complete with maps. Afterward he then called in the press for a limited briefing, but no one covered the maps. After some reporters asked questions about the maps, he went into more detail.
He explained that the invasion of Ukraine was the southern thrust to take the entirety of the countries of Ukraine and Moldova. It was to be followed by a “northern” (his term) thrust through Belarus to take the Baltics and eastern Poland. This plan was confirmed about a month later by the deputy commander of Russia’s central military district (roughly equivalent to our CENTCOM).
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s been official Russian doctrine for over 200 years. Being familiar with that doctrine, I know that the southern and central thrusts will be followed by the true northern thrust to take Finland. The Finns know it too, which is why they voted to join NATO by a 2-1 margin.
Incidentally, I was first introduced to Peter Zeihan’s YouTube site after explaining this to an acquaintance of mine, who told me “You sound just like Peter Zeihan.” “Peter who?”
Peter Zeihan gets this topic right because he knows Russian doctrine and history and listens to what the Russians say. But anyone can do that, and for those who do Russia’s actions are no mystery at all.
Its important to under stand the motivation of our adversaries even if we disagree
When the ayatollah or bin laden told us what they were going to do we dismissed because thats not what we think
Kruschev said ‘we will bury you’ in his blunt stylings his successors tried
Now Putin doesnf have the resources to pull off these
grand schemes now
He was only encouraged by the weakness of the autopen regime that was installed that fumbled in kabul catastrophically
Our contra temps in the gulf are not like that
A fictional example
Colonel phillips (about the red skulls ambition)
You know thats insane
Zola its is of no consequence
Because he can do it
Irish, are you aware of the Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours site? Great tours. Every Sun two Historians (well one Historian with a degree) host a Podcast featuring an author of a book. The book is discussed, and watchers on FB or YT can ask questions. This Sunday is a 90 min. presentation on DDay.
https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/127470
Disingeneous about Israel?
Inconceivable!
mkent:
And four years on conventional wisdom about the inevitable victory of Roosia’s mighty armed forces has completely fallen apart.
It isn’t over yet but Vladdy isn’t winning.
Military ambitions vs. the opportunity for corruption in authoritarian/totalitarian regimes: it seems clear that corruption really backfired on the Russian military capabilities, possibly hindered the Ukrainian responses, and may still be a problem for the CCP (water in missiles instead of propellant, etc.??). And we can hope, in Iran and the IRGC as well??
Which makes the stories about the levels of corruption (in various state managed welfare programs, the poor or nonexistent federal auditing or oversight, and the slush funding via NGO’s of the Dem Party or related Leftist organizations) raises a significant concern that we do not have any of that in the defense procurement side of things. It appears our current military operations are fully meeting or exceeding desired expectations, so the prospects of finding meaningful corruption or fraud in those past or upcoming materiel, armament, or systems replacements is probably low. As a retiree from defense contractor employment, I know we had period governmental agency audits. But Art Deco’s comments about the iron triangle suggests not all options for skullduggery have been closed off.
Reading some pundits these days is almost as much fun as reading fiction — but it’s all true!
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/going-medieval-saturday-june-6-2026
The “political suspense thriller” is in the latter half of the post.
Don Surbers’ week-end round-up is worth a visit just for the graphic illustrating the first item.
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/highlights-of-the-news-f12
The headline says if all – IYKYK (if you know, you know) – I always love it when the Bee can smack down two Democrat scandals with one story.
https://babylonbee.com/news/splc-says-funding-kkk-only-3-of-what-they-do
“SPLC Says Funding KKK Only 3% Of What They Do”
https://babylonbee.com/news/after-mail-in-ballots-tallied-joe-biden-wins-la-mayor-race-with-81-million-votes
https://babylonbee.com/news/to-cut-out-the-middleman-israel-and-palestine-launch-giant-sacks-of-american-tax-dollars-at-each-other
This one was from 2021 but somehow it still seems relevant.
https://www.hoover.org/research/seven-lessons-iran-war
I think the babylon bee uses a time machine (how else to explain their accurate takes)
I still think ‘burn after reading’ was the optimum view of intelligence, tell me im wrong, it also suggests that movie about chuck barris was right
The rope dancer by victor marchetti was also illuminating
Israel News7: “Israel responds: IDF strikes Hezbollah targets in the Dahieh”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/428255
SHIREHOME:
Thanks for the heads-up/link to the Ambrose Tours site. I’ll definitely check it out.
BTW, I edited a paper by Ambrose which he presented at a Cantigny conference on D-Day. Appeared in a conference proceedings book published by Cantigny, which I also wrote for and edited. Several telephone conversations with Ambrose about editing matters. Nice guy.
Well McNamara and the Liberty veterans association do not agree with the findings. I guess we all get to decide who to believe.
Jonathon Pollard seriously damaged American interests. People like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson might make a big deal about that, but so did people like Joseph Lieberman, not known to be an antisemite.
Pollard has been given Israeli citizenship, and a government pension, and people in Israel name things after him. More than one Israeli Prime Minister personally intervened on his behalf, including Netanyahu. One-off, maybe, but let’s not minimize the issue.
It’s true that we spy on Israel, Israel spies on us, that’s as it should be. But what Jonathon Pollard did was not same-old same-old, and by his own words is an American traitor to the United States, a thing much worse than an Israeli spying on us for Israel. I am not going to quote his own words because they sound too much like something that Jews are accused of believing by antisemites.
I understand that lots of American Jews and Israelis think he was hard done by, and were not trying to help him out of bad motives, but there are any number of bad people who somehow get good people working to help them, usually by someone telling lots of lies on their behalf.
@Keith
I’ve been meaning to get to you for a while since I’ve been dealing with other stuff but I’ve seen you pop up like a bad penny. Sometimes with decent takes, often times not. Especially when anything coming up with Israel appears, and your tendency to launder bad faith bullshit amd condescend to anyone who contradicts you as an “Israel Firster.” I am pro-Israel but not an Israel Firster, as we’ll see.
However in addition to being disingenious, you also seem to be vastly less intelligent and aware than you think you are, as we’re going to discuss in a bit.
So let’s get into it.
So let’s get into what “this” is, shall we?
Firstly: Let’s note the source. NBC. Since when did we start uncritically trusting these people? Especially since they have managed the rare feat of burying the lede in the url itself.
Secondly: “Sources say.”
So who the farq are these sources? Because it definitely isn’t all of the sources, as the article itself notes.
Now a few pointers here.
A: The Israeli statement is a bullshit lie in at least a couple provable cases. Israeli intelligence collection efforts are targeted against both enemies and allies as well as neutrals, as we’ve been many times before, and like all competent intel orgs are doing, including the US’s (which is one reason why people like you rarely make mention of it goign the other way around). I condemn the Israeli Embassy for making such an obvious lie, and it’s worth establishing before you try and peddle “Israel Firster” nonsense on me.
But while they’re lying about the scope of Israeli intelligence collection on its allies and neutrals, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lying about this being false.
B: Literally every source in a position of authority able to be quoted and named has denied this or not commented. Every single one. If you were as aware or knowledgeable as you hold yourself to be, this might have struck you as a problem, especially coming from an avowedly hostile outlet that would love to sabotage whatever Trump is doing.
So let’s go to the sources.
So uh, who are these “officials and former official?” Who are their names? Do we have any evidence they are who they say they are, let alone that they are true? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
To those of us keeping score at home, this is a similar hit record to things like the “Losers” smear about Trump not visiting the Belleau Wood Graves and which later was confirmably proven to be bogus (as well as being contradictory to Trump’s attitude towards military dead on basically every other case AND self-evidently illogical since the Allied troops that laid down their lives at Belleau WON).
So why oh why are you so quick to jump on this? Would you if this non-story were about – say – Russia, the PRC, North Korea, Iran, or he like?
Forgive me if I express my doubts.
And yes, that is what it is. A non-story leaning on non-sources, where three times nothing amounts to nothing. Which is damning when knowledge isn’t only about what you know, but what you can PROVE you know.
And neither you, NBC, or their supposedly-very-real-and-honest-and-totally-not-either-sock-puppets-or-lying “three sources” can’t prove jackshit about this case, including and up to that it is even true. Which is why I quietly resent having my time wasted looking over this and regard it as little better than a troll. And while I concur with Neo that you are being disingenious I do think that in this case you weren’t INTENTIONALLY Being disingenious on the whole, you just saw “Israel” and “Pentagon Raises” from somewhere – Anywhere- and you salivated like Pavlov’s Dog, not doing even the fraction of a second of time or consideration to ask yourself some basic questions.
Like
A: “Is there any way I can prove that this source is telling the truth? Or even exists?”
B: “Does NBC have a track record of honest or accurate reporting, especially about Trump?”
C: “When I say this is current, can I actually prove that it is current, or even ever was a thing?”
D: “Does this make me look bad – or like a hateful, irrational idiot – if I either cannot prove A through C after making claims based on that?”
The answer to all of these is not flattering.
Now, for the sake of the argument, does this sound like it might be a thing that COULD be true? Sure, maybe. At least it isn’t the BS “Belleau Wood Losers” nonsense that was patently absurd on its face on basically every level. I called the Israeli Embassy out for lying in this article by pointing out that their intelligence collection efforts can and do target friendly and neutral entities as well as enemies, and while for various reasons I suspect that the Iran War has those efforts de-emphasized due to the sheer tempo of hunting down “Resistance Bloc” leadership and trying to help friendly elements that they’ll have less time to do stuff like tap US phones or listen to the taps they do have, I have to concede that A: The chances they’d completely stop what intel gathering they have set up already is basically nil, and B: The aforementioned is just a Suspicion of mine, and one I openly admit and concede is such.
(See Keith, this is how one addresses stuff one suspects but cannot prove).
Moreover, the premise of the Non-News is that they are trying to gather intelligence on what Trump’s peace plans or diplomatic maneuvers regarding Iran are for. Which is eminently believable unlike Trump calling the dead that won Belleau Wood “losers.” So while still ultimately non-news and a case of NBC trying to signal boost a three times nothing is still nothing story denied or no comment’d by every source able to actually be held publicly responsible for such a comment, it at least shows that some of the slugs at NBC at a minimum thought of a coherent lie. Which is a step up from their typical offerings.
Firstly: the idea that countries don’t have friends is the kind of midwit pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-realist drivel that gave Kissinger and co their unwarranted fame. Countries in aggregate absolutely can and do have friends, as anyone who has looked over the history of Hungary and Poland for the past 500 some years or China and Korea before about the 1800s could attest, in much the same way they can and do have enemies (see: China and basically every polity to emerge from either the Steppe or Siberia, Greece and Turkey).
This does not mean that these countries will never conflict with each other. After all Poland and Hungary fought on opposite sides of WWII (though I note the Hungarians were quite generous in how they treated with Poland such as giving Polish forces in 1939 safe passage to retreat to Romania, and that during the Warsaw Uprising several Hungarian rear echelon troops serving alongside the Germans refused to partake in fighting and many defected to join the doomed Polish underground fighters), and China and Korea have several times over. And of course strictly speaking “countries” do not act or hold attitudes, they are collections of various people, some in power, some not, some making policy others not, that do act. But this is important because those people in those countries tend to have long patterns of history, cultural tendencies, beliefs, and fondnesses or animosities that together do tend to make a pattern of friendship or foeship that tends to pop up time and again even in areas or times or cases that ostentiably have nothing much to do with one another (ie: why would DeGaulle care so much about Biafra or what the British thought about it?).
Again that does not mean “friend” countries or everyone in them can or should be trusted, any more than it means that “foe” countries can never be beneficial to deal with. But it does mean the patterns are real and not only exist alongside and in some cases transcend national interests, but tend to wind up influencing what said interests are.
And by basically any metric including the financial support to and from both sides Israel and the US would qualify as such a “friend” case, even if we can and do clash and are at cross purposes.
Secondly: Even if we pretended that nations do not have friends only interests (and yes that is ultimately something we PRETEND) that ignores the basic fact that the Israelis have more incentive than most to stay on the US’s good side, and especially not to tick it off for no reason. While the Israelis do want to become more self-sufficient in large part due to the trauma of having to operate in the aftermath of October 7th while dealing with Obama and Biden’s barely veiled hostility and they’ve had reasons to tweak US interests before like with the Lavon Affair (which unlike the Liberty actually was intentional and criminal, and saw the responsible Minister kicked out) and Pollard (who I’ll get to later) much like we have tweaked them (anyone forget how Trump said he would protect Qatar against another Israeli strike? Bueller?), that doesn’t mean they’re dumb enough to think they do not benefit significantly from relations with the US. And not just materially or financially. The US being the sole semi-reliable veto on the UN going Israel burning is worth noting itself, as is the signficiant population overlap and family relations that people like you tend not to mention except for the dual citizenship in positions of power issue (and for the record I also believe that is unseemly and would be in favor of making those holding some positions of trust renounce one citizenship or another, though I accept that is a lot harder than it looks).
I have nothing good to say about Pollard and believe he should have been executed, or failing that not allowed to make Aliyah in favor of spending the rest of his life rotting in prison. It is another reason why while pro-Israel I am not an “Israel Firster” and do not trust them.
The USS Liberty was a classic if horrifying case of friendly fire due to misidentified target. We know this due to a host of sources including NSA Intercepts of Israeli communications during the course of the attack which revealed how they firmly believed it was an Egyptian ship until they didn’t, and were baffled and confused as to why. Notably some scumbags like Ward Boston have tried to suppress this (with Boston in particular briefly putting the audio on his website only to realize that anybody who can understand spoken Hebrew would realize it makes him look like the inflammatory, dishonest idiot he is, resulting in him pulling it down to try and protect his “False Flag” BS) but it remains the truth. The Israelis as a whole had no reason whatsoever to attack a US Navy ship, and none of the usual stated reasons such as “get the US involved in the Six Day War” make sense and often directly contradict Israeli interests and policy at the time (since – unlike during the Lavon Affair, which was evil and stupid for a different reason such as having Israeli assets doing what some of Nasser’s blackshirts would’ve done independently with just some prodding – the Israelis had just won the Six Day War, Egypt was withdrawing across the Canal, and not only would the US intervening in the war not militarily help Israel but it would risk Soviet entry).
In the interests of full disclosure I cannot be 100% sure no Israeli actor involved intended to attack the Liberty. But any such malicious actors would’ve had to have been at the level of the war room (Not the pilots and naval crew that actually carried out the attack, they obviously didn’t know and vocally did not, and the idea that “you can’t miss a big honking American flag” is just bullshit; not at the level of Cabinet or the Knesset), in the form of one or a couple people who decided with malice aforethought to remove the USS Liberty marker and hope that this would result in it being misidentified as a valid target and hit like what actually happened. But while I cannot 100% rule that out in the same way I can rule out bullshit like Ward Boston’s “False Flag” intentional strike thesis, I view this as less likely than not in a war room with personnel that had been going on full bore in high tempo, high intensity, diplomatically and strategically sensitive, existentially important ops for six days if not more, meaning basically everyone involved was exhausted, nerve frayed, and at the point in time where even the best start losing their touch and unavoidably making screwups. And the identity of the Liberty is just the sort of thing that’s likely to fall through the cracks in such a circumstance because it doesn’t seem IMMEDIATELY, VITALLY important at that very second in that very situation from an Israeli POV (and objectively speaking if we’re really damn blunt it’s not) but which is important enough that screwing up will cause major problems. And as we know good, innocent American servicepeople died, Israeli-American relations suffered a significant but not crippling blow, Israel had to apologize and pay restitution, and enemies of both made hay of it.
For what it is worth the Liberty still gets my blood boiling though not for the reason people like you typically cite it, but because I do believe that people should have been jailed over it and do think the Israeli response was less fullsome than ideal. But it’s a far cry from the worst or from the likes of Qatar, the Saudis, or Iran. But I suppose that makes me “Israel Firster.”
But I also want to draw attention to a related incident happening around the same time with around the same technology. The “Battle” of June 15th-18th 1968, which consisted of the US Air Force and to a lesser extent US Navy Aviation striking the Allied American/Australian ships the HMAS Hobart, USS Boston, USS Edison, USS Chandler, and later USS Blandy and USS Theodore E. Chandler and assorted swift boats MULTIPLE Times over the course of SIXTY HOURS, resulting in major, repeated Blue on Blue exchanges of fire and the tragic sinking of the US Swift Boat.
The actual cause turned out to be prolific radar problems, mostly on the F-4 Phantoms, but even then it still baffles me how this happened since it wasn’t like the Communists had naval assets of this quantity or size in Vietnam. The same idiots regarding the Liberty claiming you can’t miss a US Flag for half an hour or so are utterly silent about multiple squadrons of US aviation from two different services not only missing every single friendly flag on that fleet but the basic fact that there was no fleet in Vietnamese waters of that size that would not be allied. If there were any conspiracy theorists this would be grounds to make hay.
But they don’t for a very simple reason. Not even they can come up with even a half-baked reason why this would be intentional, since the only ships involved (America and Australia) were already involved in Vietnam. So this all but inexplicable, protracted, irrational friendly fire set of incidents was obviously unintentional and accidental, precisely because as jaw droppingly horrible as it was there’s no other explanation that holds water or even has any kind of internal scrutiny.
Yet for some reason I never, ever see this get brought up by most of the Liberty baiters like Ward Boston who insist it had to be intentional or that you can’t miss a US Flag (…… at high speeds from the air during strafing runs) over the span of maybe an hour or two.
Israel is not perfect, nor is the US-Israel relationship perfect. I am happy being bluntly candid on that issue, and I support continued cooperation with Israel knowing many of the problems far better than most of its critics. Because not many of our partners in the Middle East would go so far as to arrest their own soldiers for desecrating a Jesus Christ statue, discipline those that did not report it, and replace the statute of their own charge while providing very useful intel on mortal enemies like the Ayatollah. That doesn’t mean they’re not a potential intelligence threat (and I called out the Israeli Embassy for that reason). That doesn’t mean we should trust them or that I’m an Israeli firster.
But it does mean you need to stop being Pavlov’s Dog and rent a clue.
And I just noticed this.
McNamara’s an idiot with provably subpar judgement.
Moreover even he’s usually been careful to phrase his initial skepticism of the results differently and less concretely than “does not believe.”
Except you’ll note that said “veterans association” does not speak for all the Liberty Veterans. And there’s a reason for that. Because it was hijacked by psychopathically dishonest radicals like Ward Boston who purged those that disagreed with them to the extent they could and worked to downplay and muzzle those they could not. And why when you start getting into the issue of the actual anatomies of things Liberty veterans tend not to have fond feelings of Israel (understandably so!) but break down heavily on whether they believe the findings, if they think Israel paid enough, and so on.
You know, like actual humans tend to do.
But the important thing about this is not what the “veterans association” or any given Liberty veteran agrees with, it’s what the facts are.
And the facts are that we have Hebrew audio intercepts from the Israelis that actually attacked the Liberty showing they had absolutely no clue they were striking a US Ship, which is verified by the transcription. Moreover most of the bullshitters like you claiming intentionality have no fucking workable theory of the crime and in about half a century afterwards have made no headway into trying to identify possible culprits for this if it was intentional.
You’ll note I actually did posit a workable theory of crime, albeit an extremely marginal one. I identified the possible vector for a bad actor trying to get the Liberty attacked to being one or more of the Israeli personnel in the war room in a position to “misplace” the USS Liberty marker and thus nudge it towards being identified as a legitimate target. I pointed out how identifying a possible bad actor elsewhere does not work since the actual triggermen did not know and provably did not given the audio intercepts. I pointed out how identifying ones above in the Cabinet or Knesset did not work given their avowed interest in courting US support and desire to wind down combat operations ASAP and not widen the war (the exact opposite of what idiots like Boston claim they would want in a USS Liberty False Flag Theory).
I also pointed out how this is an unlikely theory reliant upon trying to indirectly influence an attack and hope things played out the way they did, and the more likely explanation is sheer exhaustion and distraction from a week or so of high intensity, high stress operations.
There is no alternative evidence. There is no alternative explanation. Ward Boston and his scumbag kin indirectly admitted to this when they briefly put up the USS Liberty Hebrew audio intercepts without realizing how bad it made them look, and admitted it again when they took it down.
No, no you do not.
Because “who to believe” does not matter in this case so much as WHAT to believe.
And the fact remains there is only one legitimate set of audio logs from the Liberty Attack.
The fact remains that the HMAS Hobart shows that what Boston and co claimed could not happen in a mistaken ID case can happen.
As neo said, Keith is disingeneous about Israel, again.
@om
He’s disingenuous, but I think it goes beyond that. He legitimately seems to have no idea how badly putting forth a “sources say” article from NBC makes him look.
JNS: Iran fires missile barrages at Israel
https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/iran-fires-missiles-at-israel
Trump: “What I would suggest to Iran: You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough. Get back to the table and make a deal.”
Pathetic
sdferr,
I just saw that. And Trump told Israel not to respond. I’m sorry, but Trump has lost all credibility with me. When your only real ally gets attacked and you tell them to stand down, plus you dont go after the aggressors just because you want a “deal”?
There’s no excuse any more. To hell with what the Saudis et al are worried about. Time to deal with this.
Beats shouting at clouds, I guess?
Random musings. What does Iran hope to accomplish with this? Maintaining the appearance of strength to those they lord over? Maybe. Driving a wedge between Israel and the U.S.? Or is it just to make Trump look foolish. Whatever the reason they had to expect retaliation, and evidently they don’t fear it. That itself suggests we’re doing this wrong.
If Trump were to be intentionally aiming to see to it Netanyahu can’t be reelected in the fall, I’m not sure what he’d be doing differently: is where this is going to in my mind, bad places for everyone concerned.
Well, if Trump has a good strategy he isn’t explaining it well. He is looking weak and I would have thought he wouldn’t allow that to happen.
Tamir Morag:
https://x.com/i/status/2063768780258308465
Internet traffic from AI agents and other bots now surpasses that of people:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jun/6/internet-traffic-ai-agents-bots-surpasses-people/
Turtler:
I hadn’t seen your 6/2026 02:29 PM fisking of Keith on my smartphone when I commented at 02:45 that Keith was disingenuous, again.
Thorough and well done!
Hope the job search is going well.
Selfy:
And nobody knows they are dogs (robo canids).
Keep in mind, if possible, that we’re all STILL speculating…
(To be sure, that’s what people do; but WE DO NOT KNOW how this will play out…even if we’re hot for certainties….)
– – – – – –
…Having said that, here’s something from the “Lest There Be Any Doubt” File, (“Nothing Really New” Section):
“Turkish Minister: Jerusalem will be ours;
“Turkish Minister claims Jerusalem will return to Turkey….”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/428281
So here’s a question: can the Neo-Ottomans decide unilaterally that they need to borrow a nuke or two (oh, say, just on principle)?
Break out the Turkish delight…?
IOW, Trump’s injunctions to Netanyahu MAY be merely street theater.
We don’t know.
(We CAN’T know…until the smoke clears and/or it all plays out.)
– – – – – – –
FWIW, here’s another example of clarity from Amine Ayoub:
“Israel Under Fire: Iran’s missile barrage shatters fragile calm as proxies test the limits;
“Context is essential: Israel strikes back. Its actions arise from survival imperatives after years of rockets, tunnels, and massacres, not from unprovoked aggression…”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/428293
+ Bonus (Mazel tov!!)
“…62 Year Old Dutch Man Marries The Chatbot Of His Dreams”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/skynet-soulmate-62-year-old-dutch-man-marries-chatbot-his-dreams
Gotta look at the bright side…
See? It’s all fine now.
Iran Declares End of Strikes Against Israel, Fars Says: TOPLive
Headline from Bloomberg. No idea how to get around the paywall, but I don’t think there’s much of a story yet anyway.