Pentagon Faults Iran Raid Report (Sy Hersh)

[leftchick]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=7346834

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Monday criticized a published report that said it was mounting reconnaissance missions inside Iran to identify potential nuclear and other targets.
"The Iranian regime's apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled "The Coming Wars," the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence DiRita, said in a statement.

Hersh's article, published on Sunday, was "so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed," DiRita said.

Hersh reported that President Bush had signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces military units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

DiRita did not comment on that assertion.

Instead, he said, Hersh's sources fed him "rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist and statements by officials that were never made


... does not sound like Denial to me... :eyes:

[KittyWampus]

1. Righto- Casting Aspersions But Not Denying.

[Richardo]

2. "They question our ancestry but they don't say we're wrong."

Ben Bradlee during Watergate.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. De Rita KNOWS that DoD is

leaking like a sieve... they have tried to prevent this, but it is still leaking... denying what they are doing is not going to help...

Don't worry Sly's article will be buried by the stenography corp that will not ask the relevant questions, such as... you realize these ops are a declaration of war? And what about PNAC?

[diamond14]

4. SHOOT THE MESSENGER !! even on a Federal Holiday, these

pentagoons feel threatened by the TRUTH....and the TRUTH is coming from INSIDE the pentagon....they know that....

[stray cat]

5. No denial there at all.

Maybe Cheney signed Bush's name to the orders instead of Bush signing them himself. It is also obvious that the orders are not secret anymore. The commando groups are also no longer a secret. Maybe 11 nations are involved instead of 10.

Look at all the errors! (please note the sarcasm)

[Zhade]

6. Nice non-denial denial! Hersh has 'em running scared.

A true hero, that guy!

[Pam-Moby]

7. Don't you just love it...n/t

[imenja]

8. Hersh is the best

We can always count on him to tell the truth. What would we do without him?

[Donailin]

17. Hersch, IMO, was the only journalist left who has credibility on both sides

of the aisle, but I fear the WH will do a "Dan Rather" on him. I'm still shocked that his last book, "Chain of Command" didn't have further repercussions. No heads rolled.

Bush has zero credibility, not one of his ingenious ideas has played itself out the way it was supposed to. The man is driven by a force that no one can seem to stop, and I think we all know it.

[Brundle_Fly]

30. if they rolled heads over every book

that came out about them 2003-04 they'd be doing a full time job discrediting authors. Sy is awesome and I believe him, but he is unfortunately not read by the kool-aid crew.

[TexasLawyer]

31. Bravery of The New Yorker

We should also give thanks to The New Yorker, the mag that consistently publishes Sy Hersh's ground-breaking investigative pieces. The New Yorker has put a lot on the line to publish Hersh's work, and has demonstrated great care and respect for its readers.

Renew your subscriptions, everyone. I've re-upped for another 3 years. Keep the fine journalism coming.

[punpirate]

9. Going out on a Monday, just to make sure...

... that the Washington Times has part of the week to run stories about what a silly man Sy Hersh is for believing all that claptrap from disgruntled intelligence people.

They really want to set up the news cycle on this one, make sure that their non-denial denial is in the WP and NYT just long enough so that Hersh's rebuttals get washed away by the Mad King's coronation.

Wonder if this is going to get reprinted in the Pakistan Times?

[daleo]

10. This seems like the key passage:

"Asked whether U.S. military forces had been conducting reconnaissance missions in Iran, Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable said, "We don't discuss missions, capabilities or activities of Special Operations forces.""

In other words, yes, they have conducted such missions.

[damntexdem]

11. Oh, the Pentagram, err, Pentagon denies that it's true?

That's it then: validation of the veracity of Hersch's report.

[Laurab]

32. I think you're right

They've given it far more validation - anything they take the time to deny is most definitely true. Not that I doubted it before, but an official denial, from this administration, is all I need to be convinced of its accuracy.

[paineinthearse]

12. The DoD release

Posted in full so you don't have to go there yourselves.

==============================================================

http://www.dod.gov/releases/2005/nr20050117-1987.html

U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)
News Release

On the Web:
http://www.dod.gov/releases/2005/nr20050117-1987.html
Media contact: [phone] Public contact:
http://www.dod.mil/faq/comment.html
or [phone]

----------------------------------------------------------------------No. 046-05
IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 17, 2005

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest Seymour Hersh Article

The Iranian regime’s apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled “The Coming Wars.”

Mr. Hersh’s article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed.

Mr. Hersh’s source(s) feed him with rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made.

A sampling from this article alone includes:

The post-election meeting he describes between the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not happen.

The only civilians in the chain-of-command are the President and the Secretary of Defense, despite Mr. Hersh’s confident assertion that the chain of command now includes two Department policy officials. His assertion is outrageous, and constitutionally specious.

Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith and Israel, government or non-government, do not exist. Here, Mr. Hersh is building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists. This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker.

Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings. At one point in his article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military operations he describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even from U.S. military Combatant Commanders. Mr. Hersh later states, though, that the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr. Hersh is to be believed.

By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an “alternative history” novel. He is well along in that work, given the high quality of “alternative present” that he has developed in several recent articles.

Mr. Hersh’s preference for single, anonymous, unofficial sources for his most fantastic claims makes it difficult to parse his discussion of Defense Department operations.

Finally, the views and policies Mr. Hersh ascribes to Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, Under Secretary Feith, and other Department of Defense officials do not reflect their public or private comments or administration policy.

[rodeodance]

13. thou dost protest too much!!!!

[moobu2]

15. BINGO! you took the words outa my mouth

[daleo]

14. No denial about Iran

Just a lot of re-direction and a fair bit of mock outrage.

[dave123williams]

25. Note how they call it 'conspiracy' and 'specious' but not 'untrue'.

They say his sources are unreliable, but don't challange the central posit of the article; these guys are professional liars, I think.

"Specious" means deceptively attractive. Deceptive? How about answering if the reporting is true, or not.

[paineinthearse]

26. It's all "shoot the messenger"

They should be so skilled to address the issues.

[KoKo]

16. Nope...the Bushies threw a Chimp Tantrum..but never gave "evidence"

to counteract Hersh's article. But the "Tantrum" was enough to cower the "MSM" into putting out reports that Hersh was a "Conspiracy Theorist SUPREME" who should NEVER BE BELIEVED. So Inside the Beltway caved and did MEGA ANTI-SY stories. :shrug:

Many of us no longer know who to believe their "Chimp War Displays" must be getting more successful.

[Just Me]

18. THEY ARE LYING, DECEIVING, USING AMERICANS!!!

AND THE MO-FOs AT THE PENTAGON AND WHITEHOUSE VIEW US ALL AS MERELY HUMAN "CAPITAL" TO SPEND AT THEIR ARROGANT, EGREGIOUS, IMPERIALISTIC WILL!!!!

THEY ARE LYING, DECEIVING, USING AMERICANS!!!!

I'm sorry for screaming. I just do not like to be spent like something less than a human life and I get especially pissed off that we are all being similarly spent.

[daa]

19. And Bush NEVER LIES about war

and Sy is always wrong Abu Grahib. Hey, DiRita, you have no credibility because you never say what is rumor, innuendo and assertions. What meetings never took place. Fuck, here we go, four more years of lying.

[TacticalPeek]

20. Not us.

"We don't discuss missions, capabilities or activities of Special Operations forces."

Mmmm, well, unless we can see some political gain in it, like, say a pretty young white girl needs rescuing from swarthy terrists and such, then we can get you film at eleven. Or say we need some WMD spin bigtime, then the backseats of our humvees are always available to you, Judy Chalabi.

[paineinthearse]

21. Any bets on DoD response....

...if one of the reconnaissance team members is killed or captured?

[signmike]

22. "Constitutionally specious" - nice one!

Is this not the pot calling the kettle 'Black' ?

[leftchick]

23. yes indeed!

:)

[TacticalPeek]

24. Tweety just had Hersh on Hardball, MSNBC.

I only caught the end, but that much was good. Hersh responded to the Pentagon - "press statement" - and next Tweety has retired generals etc going over the Pentagon/Hersh thing. Tweety pointed out that the press statement did not deny Hersh's Iran charges.

[Gyre]

27. We're so fucked,

but not as much as the Iranians. Somebody's gotta stick around to finance such noble efforts to spread our peculiar form of "democracy" to the heathen.

Really does remind me of "Gladiator" where nobody was safe unless they were Roman citizens.

Us (Roman citizen) murrikans, are more like oxen tied to a particularly stinky yoke (reference to paying taxes)so our soul-less leaders can savage the planet in our names. Ain't freedom great!

Gyre

[SKKY]

28. "...so riddled with errors...", hmmm. Doesn't sound like an outright...

...denial to me. If it wasn't true, I would expect, "...categorically denies", or "unequivocal falsehood". Perhaps the cat is out of the bag a bit sooner than they would have liked.

[alexisfree]

29. heard on abc bush doesnt trust the cia, order pentagon to iran

[lebkuchen]

33. Bush just won a "mandate"

so why does the Pentagon bother refuting Hersh, or any other "naysayer" for that matter? If Bush bombs Iran, won't the majority of Americans think it was probably a good idea because the President was doing it for the country's safety, to prevent mushroom cloud incidents from occurring stateside, etc?

What worked for Iraq should work with Iran, right? Never apologize, never explain.

[despairing optimist]

34. Did Hersh go with what he had so he could throw a wrench into their plans?

He may not have had a perfect story with unimpeachable sources, but he had enough info to stop a "creeping-crisis" propaganda buildup against Iran before it mushroomed into a media frenzy like the one preceding the Iraq invasion. Now the administration has to backtrack and go into defensive denial mode as a result. Hersh wrote a journalistic speed bump to slow them down, perhaps.

Just a thought.

[LynnTheDem]

35. They "faulted" Hersh's Abu Ghraib report too. And gee, who was right?

Glad they're still so stupid tho, the bushCartel; this will just make Hersh the bulldog go after them even harder. :)

[leftchick]

36. You are right Lynn! and guess what?

Ex-Sec. of Defense William Cohen on Wolfie's show defended Sy! It was great! He said Sy Hersh is credible (Unlike the pentagon which ALWAYS lies) and has excellent sources!

:)

[UL_Approved]

37. Truth is a funny thing

This is all speculation and rumor until proven. The Abu Ghraib scandal is a famous example. This could turn out to be false, but it could very likely be true.

We are all pundits, prognosticators, and spin artists until we get something backed up with corroborating evidence. This is what makes journalism tick.

We've been lied to about WMD's. The search is off, and no weapons were smuggled out of the country. Documents show that the weapons in question either never existed, or were used long ago.

After all is said and done, though, Bush has no choice but to deny this. This is a declaration of war if this is true. We will have no choice but to have a conflict. I'm sure that there is a plan for war, but not because we got caught spying and/or planting evidence.

[Supersedeas]

38. after a series of specific denials-DiRita does not comment on Exec Orders

Instead of specific denials, DiRita uses the rumor, innuendo card.

Speculative??

[dansolo]

39. Projection - look at that last statement

Hersh's sources fed him "rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist and statements by officials that were never made"

Replace Iran with Iraq, and Hersh with Bush, and then we have an accurate statement.