<snip> "The idea that (the abuse) was generated by that unit is preposterous," Hersh said of the Army's 800th Military Police Brigade, which was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison. "It was a technique to break people." <snip>
"I knew about the story about four months before I published the article," he said. "But the idea of writing the story then was not possible. The machine would have ground it up. Not only the government, but also my peers."
Hersh said the country has never seen as much "systematic distortion of facts" as it has with the Bush administration and the Iraq war. The real story of the war may never be known, though, because we are so far away from it, Hersh said.
"It is hard to understand the impact we've had," Hersh said. "It is hard for us sitting in this warm auditorium. Two foreign diplomats told me today that it is intolerable for the people over there. Are you going to believe Bush on Iraq?" Hersh said, "Or are you going to believe what you see, what you hear and what you feel inside?" <snip>
http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20050325/localnews/2094593.html