Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the 'pathetic' American media

[jakeXT]

Pulitzer Prize winner explains how to fix journalism, saying press should 'fire 90% of editors and promote ones you can't control'

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media

[G_j]

1. he is right

now, there is a REAL journalist!

[kelliekat44]

2. Ssso by this I am assuming that he believes that FOX is the bastion of truth and journalism?

His only objective seems to be to trash the Obama administration not true journalism.

[frylock]

6. if you knew anything of sy hersh you'd realize how stupid your post looks.

[Capt. Obvious]

8. Ding!

Let him go on.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

9. He has had exactly one serious news story he broke

In the last 40 years and has been living off of it ever since.

For an "outsider" he sure fas spent a lot of time quoting his anonymous highly placed sources in the pentagon.

Oh, by the way...where is this raging drone war in Iraq he was promising would come to pass after troop withdrawal?

[KittyWampus]

10. He predicted multiple times that we were going to attack Iran.

So while I appreciate his work from some time ago… during the Bush years he cried wolf too many times.

[reddread]

21. how may candidates said we should and strongly implied the would?

seems like the idea had its backers..

[leveymg]

34. Could have gone either way at points, but the threats were (are) largely psyops.

Last edited Fri Sep 27, 2013, 06:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Hersh has an unparalleled body of significant work, and his reputation is still solid if not perfect. But, whose is?

[WinkyDink]

36. Perhaps his "Wolf!" kept the war-mongers honest.

[randome]

13. How stupid is it to say the death of Bin Laden is one big lie?

Without offering anything even remotely like insinuation let alone evidence.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[reddread]

23. you first

after Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, it gets hard to take word as bond.

[randome]

24. No one is insisting you take anyone's word. But why let Hersh proclaim a lie without evidence?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[reddread]

30. why not bring Osama to justice

I believe he killed my closest relative in 1996.
the FBI tells a different story after letting the Saudis interrogate and execute their suspects without the FBI present.
as I understand it. Yet we havent heard Iranians blamed for 9-11-01?
There are a lot of questions I would like answered, and I have no expectation of justice for those murdered and maimed
servicemen.

[Eddie Haskell]

52. The same could be said about the government's story.

Where is the body? Where are the pictures of the body? Where are the witnesses? And please don't tell me that he was dumped at sea.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

25. Please change your subject line to an all-caps "I DIDN'T READ ANY OF THE STORY"

Consider it a public service to those of us who would like to have INFORMED discussion. Thank you.

[WinkyDink]

35. OMG. Read something, why don'tcha.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Seymour has had us invading Iran for six or seven years now

He was so heavily invested in that scenario that he made himself irrelevant.

[jakeXT]

5. 2007 was the height of it and ended with the intelligence assessment, from then on it transformed

into terror and assassinations by somebody.

Nuclear-Armed Iran Risks World War, Bush Says

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 — President Bush issued a stark warning on Iran on Wednesday, suggesting that if the country obtained nuclear arms, it could lead to “World War III.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/washington/18prexy.html?_r=0

U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/middleeast/03cnd-iran.html

In mid-January, a few days after an assassination by car bomb of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, at a town-hall meeting of soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas, acknowledged that the U.S. government has “some ideas as to who might be involved, but we don’t know exactly who was involved.” He added, “But I can tell you one thing: the United States was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the United States does.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/mek.html

[geek tragedy]

16. Yep, he predicts war with Iran on an annual basis.

2005

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/16/hersh.iran/

2006:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417fa_fact

2007:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Seymour_Hersh_War_with_Iran_will_0930.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/10/2/seymour_hersh_white_house_intensifying_plans

2008:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh

2011:

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/21/seymour_hersh_propaganda_used_ahead_of

[Laelth]

4. I appreciate his argument, but ...

As I understand it, if you're an "outsider" as Hersch recommends, then you can't get access to people who make the news. No access = no story = no job. These days, journalists have to be insiders because the movers-and-shakers won't even talk to them unless they kiss up. While I appreciate Hersch's perspective, I must assume that our journalists are merely doing what they have to do to keep their jobs.

How to fix this? I have no clue.

-Laelth

[Electric Monk]

11. To say, "I'm an embedded journalist" is to say, "I'm a government Propagandist.” - Chomsky

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/embedded-journalism

“No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herseif as 'embedded.' To say, 'I'm an embedded journalist' is to say, 'I'm a government Propagandist.”

― Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World

[Laelth]

15. Precisely. n/t

-Laelth

[Vanje]

44. "In-Bedded Journalist" like Judith Miller

She serviced the Bush Administration by helping them to lie us into a tragic war.

[reddread]

26. unbiased stenography is not journalism

or at least it didnt used to be.

[Laelth]

33. Hersch is right about that, no doubt.

In many ways, journalists are becoming a rare breed.

-Laelth

[Pretzel_Warrior]

7. Someone check him for senility

[Mojorabbit]

54. There is no room under the bus

You all have thrown just about everyone under it in the past year. I will give his words credence before almost any of the mainstream journalists out there these days.

[solarhydrocan]

12. Bin Laden's neighbors

Hersh: "... or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

For what it's worth, Bin Laden's neighbors agree

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto censored on the Beeb:

[geek tragedy]

14. He thinks Obama is worse than Bush, and then claims that Obama didn't end

any wars, and then points to the fact that people are still killing each other in Iraq.

Which is a bunch of nonsense.

I wonder where he'll claim bin Laden is living.

[leveymg]

38. People aren't still killing each other in Iraq? Where the hell have you been?

I agree that Hersh seems to have been a conduit for disinformation about plans to bomb Iran -- but, that was always a five minute change of policy away.

[hootinholler]

17. I forget was he on the bus or under the bus before this article

I suspect he's under now, but I'll wait for the usual suspects to show up before I declare it so.

[geek tragedy]

18. Really unfair to question the accuracy of his claims. I mean, he was totally right about the

fact we were going to war with Iran in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2011.

[hootinholler]

19. In that case

Definitely under.

[geek tragedy]

20. Where do you think he'll claim bin Laden is living?

Who's his roommate--Elvis?

[pnwmom]

22. I think he already has, since he said that every single word written about the death was wrong. n/t

[hootinholler]

28. How the fuck should I know?

I was simply wondering about his relative position in relationship to the bus.

[randome]

29. I think he's in the back of the bus.

Sucking on exhaust fumes, from the sound of things.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[geek tragedy]

31. More pertinent question is why we should take everything Seymour Hersh claims

at face value.

[hootinholler]

39. What makes you think I have the answer to that question?

I'll ask the questions I want to and you feel free to ask the ones you want to.

[geek tragedy]

40. Well, is it throwing someone under the bus to ask why we should believe them?

Hersh doesn't have a great track record of getting it right over the past decade. It's not 'throwing him under the bus' to point that out within the context of him saying Bush was better than Obama, and that there's a massive cover up conspiracy regarding the bin Laden killing.

[sabrina 1]

45. He was totally right about so many stories I wouldn 't know where to begin to help you

learn just who are attempting to discredit here. It won't work of course as we Democrats were not just grateful for one honest, informed and ultimately proven to be correct (on Abu Ghraib, on Iraq, on every lie fed to the American by the Bush War Criminals, we had all the suspicions of the lies being, confirmed by his excellent investigative journalism.

If Sy Hersch says something, it should be taken very, very seriously. He's never been popular with those who do not want the truth revealed, which is a compliment to him.

I will never Bush supporters trashing him for his interviews talking about what he knew about the Torture program. They called him a liar, a traitor, irrelevant etc. And then the story broke proving his claims to be true.

On Iran he WAS correct, we know now that Cheney was pushing hard for war with Iran but that it was, surprisingly, Bush who in the end, refused, no doubt listening for once for wiser heads.

You don't seem to know much about Hersch, if you did you would be more than a little disturbed by what he is saying now.

For Democrats his word is the gold standard of journalism, not to much the other side. They are not overly fond of the truth coming out.

[geek tragedy]

53. So you believe the Knights of Malta are covering up

The fact that binnladen is still alive?

[KoKo]

51. "The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple."

More from the article:

If Hersh was in charge of US Media Inc, his scorched earth policy wouldn't stop with newspapers.

"I would close down the news bureaus of the networks and let's start all over, tabula rasa. The majors, NBCs, ABCs, they won't like this – just do something different, do something that gets people mad at you, that's what we're supposed to be doing," he says.

Hersh is currently on a break from reporting, working on a book which undoubtedly will make for uncomfortable reading for both Bush and Obama.

"The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple." And he implores journalists to do something about it.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

27. Let's ask Sy about The Knights of Malta

Cuckoo for coco puffs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/20/AR2011012006090.html

[leveymg]

41. Some of the top commanders in JSOC during Bush2 were RW fundamentalist fanatics.

Here's what the WaPo opinion piece you linked actually says:

According to an account of the speech in Foreign Policy magazine, Hersh alleged that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the retired head of the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command and briefly the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was among several senior officers who are members or supporters of exclusive Roman Catholic organizations such as Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta.

Neoconservative advisers to President George W. Bush took the attitude that " 'we're gonna change mosques into cathedrals,' " Hersh, a writer for the New Yorker magazine, said in the speech. "That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command." The command is the part of the military focused on targeted missions to kill enemy leaders, primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its operations are almost always secret.

It's no secret that former U.S. deputy undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Gen. William Boykin publicly declared that the War in Iraq and against Islamic militants is a struggle against “a spiritual enemy called Satan.” And then there is the case of Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater/Xe/Academi, and his widely publicized views that the west is locked in a life or death struggle with Muslims. Court documents in the prosecution of Blackwater contractors for crimes in Iraq state:

"Mr Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades… [Blackwater] executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to 'lay Hajiis out on cardboard'."

Gen. McChrystal has his own baggage of extremism and contempt for civil control of the military which led to his being dismissed in 2010.

All that was pretty widely known, but I guess you missed it at the time. You might want to do some catching up.

Suggested reading on this topic: http://jewig.websitetoolbox.com/post/holy-war-on-a-global-scale-5864653

Books:

The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby.

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet.

American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993 by Anne C. Loveland.

Articles:

Jesus Killed Mohammed: The Crusade for a Christian Military by Jeff Sharlet published in Harper's Magazine may be found at http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488

U.S. Military Taught Officers: 'Hiroshima' Tactics for 'Total War' on Islam, Wired Magazine May 10, 2012. This article may be found at http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/total-war-islam/all/1

The U.S. military's 'anti-Islam classes.' This is a video showing some of the slides Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley showed in his course urging the nuking of Mecca and Medina. It can be found on Al Jazeera at http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/05/2012512105527585215.html

Christianity in the Military: Are Chaplains Becoming Increasingly Fundamentalists? This article by Jeff Sharlet on Huffington Post may be found at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-sharlet/christianity-in-the-milit_b_747585.html

[KittyWampus]

42. Oh my….. "Just when we needed an angry black man, we didn't get one"

As for President Obama, Hersh said he has been blind to the drift in America's foreign policy. "Just when we need an angry black man," he said, "we didn't get one."

maybe his comment is out of some very much larger context.

[RussBLib]

32. does everything have to be a conspiracy?

I agree that current-day journalism is pathetic, but I grow weary when one conspiracy-theory after another surfaces.

I guess WE probably killed Benazir Bhutto since she was talking about a guy who murdered Osama bin Laden in 2007. Right? Had to shut her up.

[Zen Democrat]

37. Sy Hirsch lost my respect for claiming things not true.

He has a lot of bluster, but My Lai is all he's ever really exposed. His books have been panned for inaccuracies, especially the hit job on President Kennedy.

Wouldn't believe a word out of his mouth.

[sabrina 1]

46. Are you serious that he only ever exposed one major story??

He exposed the Bush torture program eg, and people said the same things I'm seeing in this thread, back then also. Turned out to be true. He has a long, distinguished career as a journalist and when he speaks out on a story, it is generally not a good idea to laugh off what he is saying.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

43. OH NOOOOEESSSS!! It's Seymour Hersh!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!!

OBAMA BAD BAD BAD BAD!!!!!!

[sabrina 1]

47. What does your comment mean? I makes no sense that I can see.

[Electric Monk]

48. I think they're trying to parody certain BOG posters. It's double sarcasm, if that makes sense.

I could be wrong, though... what do I know?

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

50. I never visit BOG

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

49. If you don't get it, don't bother.