Salon: "Seymour Hersh's alternative history of Bush's war"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

In March 2002, Hersh writes, a military action against al-Qaida, known as Operation Anaconda, was botched in Afghanistan's mountainous border with Pakistan. Billed at the time as a success story by the Pentagon, it was in fact a debacle, plagued by squabbling between the services, bad military planning and avoidable deaths of American soldiers, as well as the escape of key al-Qaida leaders, likely including Osama bin Laden.

snip

Hersch speaks, in response to a question about the Bush administration being "very selective not only about what kind of information they present to the public but even in what they decide to believe in themselves"...

"I think these guys in their naiveté and single-mindedness have been so completely manipulated by -- not the Israelis -- but the Iranians. The Iranians always wanted us in. I think there's a lot of evidence that Iran had much to do with (Ahmed) Chalabi's disinformation (about nonexistent Iraqi WMD). I think there were people in the CIA who suspected this all along, but of course they couldn't get their view in. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee's report's a joke, the idea this CIA was misleading the president. They get some analysts in and say, "Were you pressured?" And they all say, "No, excuse me?" Is that how you do an investigation? The truth of the matter is, there was tremendous pressure put on the analysts (to produce reports that bolstered the case for war). It's not as if anybody issued a diktat. But everybody understood what to do."

Hersch again, on Rumsfeld's responsibility for Abu Ghraib:

"I think they (Rumsfeld and senior administration officials) had a chance in the fall of 2002 to set the limits, and they chose not to. I don't think the CIA analyst who did the report was very explicit in his written document about the abuses. That isn't the way to get ahead. But he certainly told his peers there was a real mess there, so they know it. All she (Rice) had to do was put the word out there. The chain of command is very responsive. If you put out the word that you're not going to tolerate this crap, it's not going to happen. But that's not the word they put out. Nobody would have countenanced in his right mind Abu Ghraib. But then again, if you think a bunch of kids from West Virginia understood the way to the soul of an Arab man is to take off his clothes and photograph him ... they didn't know that. Somebody told it to them. And that's the thing about the military. In loco parentis. They have an obligation to take our children and protect them, not only from land mines but from doing stupid things that could land them in jail."

[KoKo]

1. They got to Sy....Heard him last week on MTP...a weak shadow of

his former self. This article is so ambiguous...I know that he "got the phone call."

Or, he positioned himself in the "middle right" to sell his book.

I love Sy...he's a champion and got the Abu Ghraib story out...but just my observation that something's changed. :-( A "Cassandra" observation, maybe.

[Wind Dancer]

2. KoKo01, what do you mean?

I have watched all of his interviews on DemocracyNow and didn't get that impression when he was allowed to speak freely. The pieces he has written in the New Yorker have been hard hitting on this administration.

I would hate to think Sy Hersh has changed but would like to hear more about why your opinion has changed. He's my favorite journalist so I may be biased in my opinion.