Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh spills the secrets

[shraby]

of the Iraq quagmire and the war on terror

BERKELEY – The Iraq war is not winnable, a secret U.S. military unit has been "disappearing" people since December 2001, and America has no idea how irreparably its torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has damaged its image in the Middle East. These were just a few of the grim pronouncements made by Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Seymour "Sy" Hersh to KQED host Michael Krasny before a Berkeley audience on Friday night (Oct. 8).

The past two years will "go down as one of the classic sort of failures" in history, said the man who has been called the "greatest muckraker of all time" and (paradoxically) the "enfant terrible of journalism for more than 30 years." While Hersh blamed the White House and the Pentagon for the Iraq quagmire and America's besmirched world image, he was stymied by how it all happened. "How could eight or nine neoconservatives come and take charge of this government?" he asked. "They overran the bureaucracy, they overran the Congress, they overran the press, and they overran the military! So you say to yourself, How fragile is this democracy?"

From My Lai to Abu Ghraib

That fragility clearly unnerves him. Hersh summarizes his mission as "to hold the people in public office to the highest possible standard of decency and of honesty…to tolerate anything less, even in the name of national security, is wrong." He tries his best. More than any other U.S. journalist alive today, he embodies the statement that "a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government," a belief defined by the conservationist Edward Abbey

(snip)

"Bush scares the hell out of me"

(snip)

"It doesn't matter that Bush scares the hell out of me," Hersh answered. "What matters is that he scares the hell out of a lot of very important people in Washington who can't speak out, in the military, in the intelligence community. They know in ways that none of us know, the incredible gap between what is and what thinks."

(more)

<http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/10/11_hersh.shtml>

[RobertDevereaux]

1. Thanks for posting this!

[shraby]

2. Have to add this from the article

"They just shot them one by one"

There was more — rumors of atrocities around Iraq that to Hersh brought back memories of My Lai. In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.

"He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts," Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'

"It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts," Hersh continued. "You know what I told him? I said, 'Fella, you blamed the captain, he knows that you think he committed murder, your troops know that their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Complete your tour. Just shut up! You're going to get a bullet in the back.' And that's where we are in this war."

(more)
<http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/10/11_hersh.shtml>

MY GOD!!! What are they doing over there????

[shraby]

3. This needs kicked

:kick: :kick: :kick:

[leftchick]

4. unfuckingbelievable that we would be back where we were....

35 years ago only a desert instead of the jungle. Now how the fuck do we get out?!? :(

[MadHound]

10. Well dispite the best laid plans, by Kerry and others,

There is only one way out. And that is to pack up and leave, now. Yes, I hear what you're saying, this will lead to civil war and chaos in Iraq once we leave, but don't you get it yet? There is going to be chaos and civil war whenever we leave, just like in Vietnam. Any government, whether voted in by the people of Iraq or not, is going to be considered illegitimate because it was set up by the US. Anything we touch over there is going to be ripped apart once we leave, simply because the US is the one who set these matters in motion.

Thus we have a stark choice before us. Leave now, and watch chaos and civil war follow in Iraq. Or try to rebuild things, while still fighting an unwinnable war, commiting ever more atrocities, killing ever more thousands of innocents, suffering ever more hundreds of casualties, pouring billions of more dollars down a rat hole, and then leave after "restoring Iraq", and watch chaos and civil war follow in Iraq.

Apparently we do not learn from the mistakes we made in Vietnam, therefore we are doomed to repeat them in Iraq. Lord help us all, for it will only get worse until we leave.

[gpandas]

17. this seems so simple to me...

we got rid of saddam, so pack it in. let them determine what happens in their country. oh,i forgot the military bases.

[MadHound]

18. A question for you then friend

Do you honestly think that we can rebuild Iraq and set up a government, of any type, that will be stable and secure once we leave?

[gpandas]

22. no

[Eloriel]

36. Well, that was never the intention anyway, now, was it? n/t

[leftchick]

21. "don't I get it?"... excuse me?

I have been screaming for over a year now to bring the troops home and give those BILLIONS that are disappearing in the pockets of the "contractors" to the Iraqis and let them sort it out. It won't work any other way. History tells us so...

:(

[MadHound]

24. Sorry friend, I wasn't speaking directly to you,

Or to the others around here who realize the shit we're in over in Iraq. I speaking to those many, many souls who still continue to believe that we can somehow, miraculously install a stable, long term government in Iraq, if we would just let Kerry do the job, or send in more troops, or more materials, or . . . . whatever.

I know that I'm not alone in my opinion, and I wasn't berating those who share it. I was simply taking the opportunity to reiterate it for those who still believe that we can salvage something out of the horror of Iraq.

[Bandit]

27. Do you think that aspect could be mitigated with international

efforts to stablize the situation. I think Kerry has the right idea. Involve the rest of the world. say to them "Hey we screwed up "Big time" and now really need the help of the rest of the world." Gather together the smartest minds in the world and brainstorm a way for Iraq to survive in a peaceful way and the US to get it's military out of there at least as a majority force. It may take an international police force to establish and maintain law and order long enough for Iraq to become a legitimate country again. I think the Iraqis would accept a true international force as long as America was no longer in charge.

[TankLV]

38. I agree entirely.

Who is willing to be the last one killed for a LIE!

[JohnyCanuck]

7. As the French would put it.......

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

But a test soon confronted Maj. Powell. A letter had been written by a young specialist fourth class named Tom Glen, who had served in an Americal mortar platoon and was nearing the end of his Army tour. In a letter to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam, Glen accused the Americal division of routine brutality against civilians. Glen's letter was forwarded to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai where it landed on Maj. Powell's desk.

"The average GI's attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting to accomplish in the realm of human relations," Glen wrote. "Far beyond merely dismissing the Vietnamese as 'slopes' or 'gooks,' in both deed and thought, too many American soldiers seem to discount their very humanity; and with this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese citizenry humiliations, both psychological and physical, that can have only a debilitating effect upon efforts to unify the people in loyalty to the Saigon government, particularly when such acts are carried out at unit levels and thereby acquire the aspect of sanctioned policy."

Glen's letter contended that many Vietnamese were fleeing from Americans who "for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." Gratuitous cruelty was also being inflicted on Viet Cong suspects, Glen reported.

"Fired with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed with a vocabulary consisting of 'You VC,' soldiers commonly 'interrogate' by means of torture that has been presented as the particular habit of the enemy. Severe beatings and torture at knife point are usual means of questioning captives or of convincing a suspect that he is, indeed, a Viet Cong...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html

[coalition_unwilling]

9. Hersh's Chain of Command is a must-read

I just finished it this weekend and it's a masterpiece. Clear, well-written, well-organized and current up to August, 2004.

Hersh's thesis is that the reason the military stone-walled so long on getting to the bottom of torture-gate is that they were trying to protect the real asset, i.e., use of the Special Access Programs which got imported into Iraq as the Resistance got legs.

Will there ever be a reckoning?

[shanti]

14. and we wonder why so many soldiers

are coming back so messed up mentally? my lai redux...:-(

[alfredo]

5. Kick this

:Kick:

[SpiralHawk]

6. Secret US military unit "disappearing" people?

ding...ding...ding...dong or whatever. Frikkin Alarm Bells Going Off all over the Frikking Place.

This is Truly Chilling:


From the article
"My government has a secret unit that since December of 2001 has been disappearing people just like the Brazilians and the Argentineans did.

"Rumsfeld decided after 9/11 that he could not wait. The president signed a secret document…There's a team of people, they fly in unmarked planes, they fly in Gulfstreams, they have their own choppers, they don't carry American passports, and they just grab people …"

(snip)

BushCo. Shame. Shame. Shame.

[AmerDem]

8. Great post!

Thanks!:toast:

[LeinesRed]

11. I thought I knew the depths of this tragedy

I did not know the extent that to which our "private industries" have allowed for no meaning employment opportunity. No wonder they line up to be policemen, its the only job available.

[tlcandie]

12. Real eye opener from original link ..

<snip>


I've been doing an alternate history of the war, from inside, because people, right after 9/11, because people inside — and there are a lot of good people inside — are scared, as scared as anybody watching this tonight I think should be, because , if he's re-elected, has only one thing to do, he's going to bomb the hell out of that place. He's been bombing the hell of that place — and here's what really irritates me again, about the press — since he set up this Potemkin Village government with Allawi on June 28 — the bombing, the daily bombing rates inside Iraq, have gone up exponentially. There's no public accounting of how many missions are flown, how much ordinance is dropped, we have no accounting and no demand to know. The only sense you get is we're basically in a full-scale air war against invisible people that we can't find, that we have no intelligence about, so we bomb what we can see.

And yet — despite the more than 1,000 deaths of U.S. soldiers and the horrific number of Iraqi casualties — Bush continues to believe we are doing the right thing, according to Hersh. "He thinks he's wearing the white hat," he said, adding that is what makes this administration different from previous ones whose hypocrisy Hersh has exposed. Bush and the neocons "are not hypocrites."
<snip>

[LeinesRed]

13. "shades of Vietnam"

that is no overstatement

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. Isn't it enough

that we've gone into Iraq and taken their country. We've taken control of their oil. We're building 14 bases on their soil. Why do we have to brutalize these people while we take everything else away from them? There is no justification for being oppressive occupiers. The people in Bush Co that are behind all of these are truly sick people.

[shanti]

16. kick

:kick:

[robertpaulsen]

19. Fantastic find, shraby!

They've been "disappearing" people?! My God, it sounds like Pinochet is in charge. Oh, that's right, Allawi (CIA) is not a puppet.

Keep this kicked!

:kick:

[shraby]

20. RP, I check out antiwar.com

quite often. Like to read Justin Raimondo although I don't always agree with him, he's been on top of the neocon stories. The site usually has quite a bit of spot on reports.
I really wanted the Plame indictments and Sibel Edmonds to come out earlier, but on second thought, if they come out after Kerry is in the white house on Jan. 20 there will be no one to pardon the perps and they can be prosecuted to the full extent and actually serve their time.

[robertpaulsen]

23. My thoughts exactly. Watergate Part II

And just like the first one, it will force the incumbent to resign after the election. Hopefully, Kerry will be in power so the perps all get sentenced.

Good suggestion with antiwar.com

Here's a site with lots of great links:

http://www.countryjoe.com/crisis.htm

[shraby]

28. Thanks RP.

I've got some reading to do I see.

[robertpaulsen]

25. Kick

Very important news from one of the best reporters in the world.

:kick:

[txindy]

26. kick

:kick:

[Disturbed]

29. Secret Prisons

Published on Tuesday, May 4, 2004 by the International Herald Tribune
Prisoner Abuse: What About the Other Secret U.S. Prisons?
by Reed Brody

We must all, like President George W. Bush, share a "deep disgust" at the pictures of U.S. military personnel subjecting Iraqi detainees to humiliating treatment. The problem, however, is that this does not appear to be an isolated incident.

Across the world, the United States is holding detainees in offshore and foreign prisons where allegations of mistreatment cannot be monitored. It has also been accused of sending terror suspects to countries where information has been beaten out of them.

The classic case, of course, has been Guantánamo, Cuba, which the Bush administration deliberately chose as a detention facility for more than 700 detainees from 44 countries in an attempt to put them beyond the reach of the U.S. courts - and of any courts, for that matter. The U.S. government has argued that U.S. courts would not have jurisdiction over these detainees even if it they were being tortured or summarily executed.

But Guantánamo may not be the worst problem; indeed, it may even be a diversion from more extreme situations. Perhaps out of concern that Guantánamo will eventually be monitored by the U.S. courts, the Bush administration does not hold its most sensitive and high-profile detainees there. Terrorism suspects like Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are detained instead in undisclosed locations outside the United States, with no access to Red Cross or other visits.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0504-06.htm

* Seems that most of the American population have put this stuff behind them. After the initial shock of the photos they were told that it was "just a few bad apples" and they were going to be punished. End of story. Down the memory hole and move on to the next sensational news story.

[G_j]

30. Bush scares the hell out of me too! nominated n/t

[robertpaulsen]

31. Here's another scary gem from the article.

My government has a secret unit that since December of 2001 has been disappearing people just like the Brazilians and the Argentineans did. Rumsfeld decided after 9/11 that he could not wait. The president signed a secret document…There's a team of people, they fly in unmarked planes, they fly in Gulfstreams, they have their own choppers, they don't carry American passports, and they just grab people. And maybe in the beginning I can understand there was some rationale. Right after 9/11 we were frightened, we didn't know what to do …
The original idea behind the sexually humiliating photos taken at Abu Ghraib, Hersh said he had heard, was to use them as blackmail so that the newly released prisoners — many of whom were ordinary Iraqi thieves or even civilian bystanders rounded up in dragnets — would act as informants. "We operate on guilt, operate on shame," Hersh explained. "The idea of photographing an Arab man naked and having him simulate homosexual activity, and having an American GI woman in the photographs, is the end of society in their eyes."

And the fact that Americans had perpetrated such acts — and refused to take responsibility for it — ended America's role as any kind of moral leader in the eyes of not just the Middle East, but the world, Hersh railed. He talked about an Israeli, a longtime veteran of the troubles between his country and the Palestinians, who had emailed him to say, in essence, "We've been killing them for 40 or 50 years, and they've been killing us for 40 or 50 years, but we know that somewhere down the line we're going to have to live with those SOBs…If we had treated our Arabs the way you treated them in Abu Ghraib, the sexual stuff, the photographs, we couldn't live with them. You guys do not begin to understand what you've done, where you have put yourself in the Arab world."



If you read this, nominate it!

[Eloriel]

37. The Israeli needs to know that

those particular interrogation techniques (the sexual humiliation) were DEVELOPED by the Israelis.

[loudsue]

32. Hersch gives clarity and punctuation to what we already understand....

He is so incredibly talented, and I'm SOOOOO glad he's one of the good guys!

Kicking a MUST READ thread....

:kick::kick::kick::kick:

[robertpaulsen]

33. Kick! Important must-read!

:kick:

[KYDEM]

34. Kick

n/t

[LibertyorDeath]

35. Big Kick

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[Mister K]

39. Forget the text....

Watch the video if you have the time. Simply disturbing.

[in_cog_ni_to]

40. I hope the "secret unit" doesn't "disappear" Hersh.

I'm speechless. Every day I learn something more evil than the day before. How do we stop this? How? When will people stand up to this administration? Where are our politicians? Where are the Generals? Why hasn't the military turned on these people? Why are they not speaking out? Make this shit PUBLIC. Make the American people see what's happening. My g-d. I can't take this shit. It's all too much. If we thought we were hated before, this just exacerbated that hatred 100 times more. I think this requires a movement "of the people" in order to stop it. I see no other way. No one else seems to give a shit. :(

[robertpaulsen]

41. Back to the top!

:kick:

[lil-petunia]

42. Hey. He was supposed to scare terra-ists, not us!

Hersh is always a bright light, even when his news is dire and dark.

[kingkubrick]

43. military unit and Berg killing?

"a secret U.S. military unit has been "disappearing" people since December 2001"

Remember how the Nicholas Berg beheading video turned up in May 2004 just as the Abu Graib issue was breaking? There were questions about the orange jumpsuit Berg was wearing, about the timing of the video and the appearance of his body, the white skin of the supposed terrorists, even questions about the chair and the wall behind him.

Was Berg killed by this einsatzgruppen disappearing unit as a diversion?

[Disturbed]

44. Berg Beheading- Black Op

This was needed to counter balance the breaking Prison Torture story.

The Neo Fascists used it to it's full extent.

[cynthia]

45. No wonder Bush defends so fiercely his backing out of the international

tribunal. I thought at the time that it made us look bad, look like we had something to hide. The neocons knew all along that they were committing evil acts and did not want to be held accountable.