“Israel is not really our friend, as any survivor of the USS Liberty can tell you.”

By that reasoning any friendly fire incident means that the US is “[someone]our friend”

-A lot of the recent anti-US sentiment in Canada feeds off the bombing of the PPCLI in Afghanistan. Of course, a lot of it is exploited and hyped by hypocritical **sholes who usually hate the military, but when the debate about Iraq came up it was hard to argue against the meme that “the last time we send troops to a US imperialist war the only KIAs were to an American 500lb bomb

-In both Gulf Wars, the US air force and army aviation were responsible for a significant percentage of the UK casulties. This still has repreucssions in England

-The USS Vincennes taking down an Iranian airbus in the gulf

There is no doubt that the attack on the Liberty was negligent in the extreme, but anti-Israel elements in the US have totally hyped it to force a wedge between the US and Israel. As the examples above demonstrate, bad things happen in war – people shoot first and ask questions later. When the Liberty was attacked Israel was involved in its first significant naval conflict, and they screwed up, nothing more.

On Pollard, I think that Israel has made a total PR mess of it, and somebody should be pimp-slapped for it. There is a constant whining in public that is unseemly, and only feeds the anti-Israel forces. Some of Israel’s allies here in the US are even worse about it.