Again, for you Liberty-tutored ones: despite the article, it does NOT all come down to the flying US flag being seen, or to the incredibility of the alleged misidentification of the ship as the Egyptian horse-carrier el-Quseir. Of course, the US flag was flying nearly all the time of the attack, and the identity with the el Quseir ship is a bogus excuse, an embellishment of a tentative identification. The issue is really when the Israeli command decided to take US identity seriously -- before the attack for some mysterious hard-to-imagine reason, or during (but they kept going out of uncertainty, miscommunication, etc.)

To develop those points, it really doesn't matter much if the ship was decked out in red white and blue and the crew was singing and dancing Yankee Doodle Dandy on the deck. OK, that matters a bit but my point is that false flagging is as old as ships on the sea, and such easily could have been presumed as false flagging. Has it come to the point that I really need to refer even you knee-jerk anti-Israel types to your own manual, the not-false parts where Israelis are socialized to think of Arabs as sneaky? And following up a mistake with piling-on fire is a phenomenon seen as recently as the Blackwater shootings in downtown Baghdad.

The tantalizingly referred to, but never fully heard anywhere, alleged recorded pilots' conversations may suggest that there was some discussion and sighting of an American flag, and a dispute over whether to keep attacking or abort. That may be criminal to have disregarded the flag, but it doesn't prove foreknowledge. As noted in my previous entry, mistaken air attacks happen even while the pilots are talking about the very thing (orange NATO panels in this incident) that indicates they shouldn't attack.

Still, all is worthy of fresh investigation, especially to alleviate the anger of the sailors and intelligence workers and families. Alot of questions -- namely if they wanted to sink it quickly why didn't they, or why didn't they use weapons on the aircraft designed to sink a ship?

Far more interesting are some of these documents at the CIA. At least two have unnamed Israeli sources implying or directly stating there were orders from Moshe Dayan or high command to attack the ship (something the pro-foreknowledgers should use more conspicuously). This is almost a smoking gun, but unevaluated rumor from an unspecified source which includes the ridiculous boast that Israelis don't make mistakes isn't enough. Plus, if the Moshe Dayan story is true, there was enough reported resistance and even disgust in his own circles of command to the attack, that it would assuredly have leaked, even if indirectly, through conventional (press, archival and journalistic) routes. Especially given that Dayan had many political enemies.

Israel leaks like a sieve; the reason we know many of its past and present misdeeds is because Israelis report and publicize them.

And again, a believable motive would really really help, if it was done with foreknowledge.