If you're talking about the USS Liberty, that was unequivocally a deliberate act by Israel.
While folks endlessly bring up the Liberty...
Let's see... We should nuke Japan again over the Panay Incident.
Gas North Korea for the USS Pueblo.
Smart bomb China for the Hainan Island incident... Were they rammed our plane and then wouldn't give it back until they had dismantled it.
And certainly the Germans have not paid for the Lusitania yet... so we ought to firebomb dresden again.
Oh and let's not forget the Soviets shooting down KAL 007 and killing a US Congressman in the process (not that a Congressman was any great loss)
Then again The USS Vincennes shot down Iranian Flight 655...
The US Army Air Corps 'Accidentally' Bombed Switzerland about 75 times in WW2. Oops.
An FB111 Put a smart bomb through the window of the French Embassy in Tripoli in the '80s (I thought that showed some real style... since France would not let the US fly over its airspace to pummel Moammar's tents.)
Oh and I seem to remember we also put a smart bomb into the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Oops... I think we had to apologize for that one.
And there was that bad day in 1950 when USAF planes mistook a Soviet Airforce Base for a North Korean air force base... and blew the shit out of it. That was kind of a big oops...
And who can forget the time we dropped three H-bombs on Spain, which exploded 1000 pounds each of conventional explosives, scattering a shit ton of Plutonium all over a fishing village... There was that. (Not to mention dropping one in South Carolina.) One safety away from turning a big chunk of Spain into a new Gulf... (Gulf of LeMay?) Same with South Carolina. That would have sucked!
Then there was the time that a guy with a wrench and no dummy cord on the socket almost turned Arkansas into a smoking hole.... Oops.
So... endlessly braying on about the Liberty is just stupid. In the Fog of War... stuff happens. Israel had NO reason to deliberatly attack a US ship as it was looking for US Assistance in the Six Day war... and deliberately attacking the Liberty would have jeopardized getting aid from LBJ. Moreover, the Liberty was an old US "Henry Kaiser" Liberty ship and hundreds had been sold surplus after WW2. They were used as tramp steamers and military ships and fishing boats all over the world. It was a lightly-disguised Intelligence-gathering ship... and easily mistaken for a number of the same types of ships being used by Egypt and other navies... Liberty did not look like a state-of-the-art U.S. Ship and was believed to be a threat. The 'old beat up' look of Liberty was part of its 'spy trawler' cover.
So while tragic... there is no basis for endlessly beating up Israel for the Liberty. We've been just as careless, reckless and accident-prone as anyone else has. Weapons are a dangerous business. Weapons in and around war zones... are inherently at risk. As are their crews. Sucked for the folks killed on Liberty. They were no less casualties of the Cold War than hundreds of others who served and defended and were in the line of fire when/where the Cold War went hot. Or when shit happened.
Sirhr