TRH, you're wrong. The war was already going on when the Liberty was attacked. At the time, the US and Israel weren't as "friendly" as they are now. France and the UK were still supporting Israel while we were noncommittal. They didn't know who we would give the Liberty's intelligence gathering to. That being said, it was a despicable act that shouldn't have gone severely unpunished.
War was raging, for sure, but the Liberty's destruction (and murder of all crewmen) was
part of a continuing operation to interrupt US intelligence in the region for reasons of deceiving the US about their operations against the Arab states, particularly Egypt. Didn't matter that the Israeli initiation of the war occurred three days earlier, since their operations to interfere with US intelligence operations were ongoing, and the attack on the Liberty was a part of it.
