Seymour Hersh on Iran Attack: MSNBC "Hardball"

[oasis]

His interview with Tweety coming up.

[cynatnite]

1. On now!

I like listening to him.

[faithnotgreed]

5. any details are much appreciated - no way am i watching msm

but thank you for any details you want to share

[oasis]

Military wants to limit use of nukes in Iran. Senior officers will resign

if Chimpy insists on the use of nukes against Iran.

[in_cog_ni_to]

6. Bush will just find a General who WILL drop the nukes for him.

He's insane. Drunk with power.:scared:

[oasis]

10. He'll get a fellow "crusader" bible thumper to do it.

[lyonn]

22. That lunatic General that goes around preaching

how America is a Christian/religious country. can't remember his name, seems like Shelton (??) maybe starts with an S. Heard he was promoted recently. Couple of years ago he got quite a bit of press, he is a fanatic.

[librechik]

23. Boykin--"Our God is better than your god"

[oasis]

27. Wow! rapid response. I was racking my brain for the name.

:thumbsup:

[lyonn]

29. Me too, spent all this time searching

After about 10- 15 min. realised my guess was way off. I found his name by searching General and fanatic, imagine.

[oasis]

34. general-fanatic.?? that's a good one. (eom)

[Hubert Flottz]

38. Look for "Task Force 121"

MOVING TARGETS

Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

snip...

As Cambone’s influence has increased, that of Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, has diminished. In September, 2001, Feith set up a special unit known as the Office of Special Plans. The office, directed by civilians who, like Feith, had neoconservative views, played a major role in the intelligence and planning leading up to the March invasion of Iraq. “There is finger-pointing going on,” a prominent Republican lobbyist explained. “And the neocons are in retreat.”

One of the key planners of the Special Forces offensive is Lieutenant General William (Jerry) Boykin, Cambone’s military assistant. After a meeting with Rumsfeld early last summer—they got along “like two old warriors,” the Pentagon consultant said—Boykin postponed his retirement, which had been planned for June, and took the Pentagon job, which brought him a third star. In that post, the Pentagon adviser told me, Boykin has been “an important piece” of the planned escalation. In October, the Los Angeles Times reported that Boykin, while giving Sunday-morning talks in uniform to church groups, had repeatedly equated the Muslim world with Satan. Last June, according to the paper, he told a congregation in Oregon that “Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.” Boykin praised President Bush as a “man who prays in the Oval Office,” and declared that Bush was “not elected” President but “appointed by God.” The Muslim world hates America, he said, “because we are a nation of believers.”

There were calls in the press and from Congress for Boykin’s dismissal, but Rumsfeld made it clear that he wanted to keep his man in the job. Initially, he responded to the Times report by praising the General’s “outstanding record” and telling journalists that he had neither seen the text of Boykin’s statements nor watched the videotape that had been made of one of his presentations. “There are a lot of things that are said by people in the military, or in civilian life, or in the Congress, or in the executive branch that are their views,” he said. “We’re a free people. And that’s the wonderful thing about our country.” He added, with regard to the tape, “I just simply can’t comment on what he said, because I haven’t seen it.” Four days later, Rumsfeld said that he had viewed the tape. “It had a lot of very difficult-to-understand words with subtitles which I was not able to verify,” he said at a news conference, according to the official transcript. “So I remain inexpert”—the transcript notes that he “chuckles” at that moment—“on precisely what he said.” Boykin’s comments are now under official review.

Boykin has been involved in other controversies as well. He was the Army combat commander in Mogadishu in 1993, when eighteen Americans were slain during the disastrous mission made famous by Mark Bowden’s book “Black Hawk Down.” Earlier that year, Boykin, a colonel at the time, led an eight-man Delta Force that was assigned to help a Colombian police unit track down the notorious drug dealer Pablo Escobar. Boykin’s team was barred by law from providing any lethal assistance without Presidential approval, but there was suspicion in the Pentagon that it was planning to take part in the assassination of Escobar, with the support of American Embassy officials in Colombia. The book “Killing Pablo,” an account, also by Mark Bowden, of the hunt for Escobar, describes how senior officials in the Pentagon’s chain of command became convinced that Boykin, with the knowledge of his Special Forces superiors, had exceeded his authority and intended to violate the law. They wanted Boykin’s unit pulled out. It wasn’t. Escobar was shot dead on the roof of a barrio apartment building in Medellín. The Colombian police were credited with getting their man, but, Bowden wrote, “within the special ops community . . . Pablo’s death was regarded as a successful mission for Delta, and legend has it that its operators were in on the kill.” Much More...

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031215fa_fact

SEYMOUR M. HERSH and The New Yorker are doing a great job getting the truth out!

[Rocknrule]

39. Rather "My God has a bigger dick than your God"

to quote George Carlin

[IChing]

2. He is letting him speak...for once

[in_cog_ni_to]

3. Thanks!

:hi:

[eleny]

4. Senior military to resign over nukes if W keeps nukes as an option?

WOW!

[PCIntern]

7. Maybe Tweety will resign

as well...

That wouldn't be ALL bad then...omelettes and eggs and all that.

[eleny]

9. I could handle 2 hours of Olbermann

[PCIntern]

...or Olberman's sub the other night.

Excellent!!

[oasis]

8. "It's regime change again" Hersh says. It's not really about Iran getting

nuclear weapons. The international community agress that Iran is years away from the technology.

[eleny]

13. And our estimate is that they're 10 years away from having a nuke

So, W just has a strong itch for a jab at the nuke button.

[oasis]

17. "I'm your war president". He knows that's the only card he has left to

play in his quest to get his approval numbers back up.

[cynatnite]

11. I think a few from the joint chiefs know bush is insane..

bush plans on going through with his 'messianic' mission and the only way out without resigning, refusing orders or a coup is to make it public.

It'll keep him contained...well, for now.

[oasis]

16. "Messianic". Joint chiefs and many world leaders a wary of this messianic

maniac.:scared:

[spanone]

28. I got chills when I heard him say that.

Bush* regime is like a frightening novel that you think just could never REALLY happen.

[Fleshdancer]

12. Seymour Hersh discussed an odd strategy

according to his sources, the point of attacking Iran is for regime change, not because they're building a nuclear bomb. He said the strategy is to bomb Iran and embarrass the religious leaders enough that the people of Iran will over throw them. :wtf: Please tell me this is a joke. Does anyone really believe that the if bombed the Iranians are going to start turning on each other and not on the country that BOMBED THEM???

We're so fucked.

[eleny]

15. W has to make his move before November

Otherwise, he could be screwed by Dems taking charge.

Jesus! :scared:

[Fleshdancer]

19. Couldn't he give the order without declaring war?

I don't know. I'm starting to think we're at the mercy of our Generals now. Our Mad King George is too far gone.

[oasis]

33. Bush wouldn't bait Iran into a "pre-emptive strike" against us,would he?

:scared:

[oasis]

20. Same storyline as Iraq. Drop bombs on them and they throw flowers on us.

:eyes:

[Karenina]

24. Got my hat on...

:tinfoilhat: Iran has "postponed" going onlone with their stock exchange. I think the Amis are really aiming at their infrastructure to destroy the capacity of every computer in the country with erraaa... "precision bombing." Of course, the wholesale slaughter of Persians would be a value-added bonus. Amurikkka is one sick, rabid puppy. :cry:

[oasis]

26. Not a rabid America. It's Bush, the neocons and the kool-aid swillers.

We have a maniac at the wheel.

[Rocknrule]

40. Can't throw flowers at us if all the flowers (and people) are vaporized

[mom cat]

25. Just like the roses and chocolate after Shock and Awe. Same general

principle. :grr:

[Emit]

35. Seems like they've been working on regime change for... like...ever n/t

[Emit]

36. Seriously though

Regime change in Iran has been a neocon agenda for a long time, and is nothing new. Here's an old article by Laura Rozen from 2004 that details some of the history and some of the current issues.

Leading the charge in favor of this idea is neoconservative writer and political operative Michael Ledeen. For years, Ledeen -- currently the Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and acontributing editor at National Review -- has argued that the chief source of international terrorism in the world is Tehran. In numerous articles and his most recent book, "The War Against the Terror Masters" (2002), Ledeen has insisted not only that overthrowing the regime in Tehran should have come before military intervention in Iraq (though he continues to strongly support that operation), but that it would be relatively easy. "You don't have to fire a shot," he told The New York Sun in November 2002. "The Iranians are dying to bring down the government themselves."

~snip~

The regime change idea is generating controversy both inside and outside the Bush administration, not least because it is Ledeen himself who is most vigorously championing it. For inseparable from Ledeen's decades-long fascination with Iran and fervent belief that it is on the verge of democratic revolution is Ledeen's own controversial history with America's Iran policy, his zeal for the covert, and his disdain for sanctioned bureaucratic channels for US foreign policy making.

It was Ledeen who, as a consultant to Alexander Haig, President Reagan's secretary of state, helped broker the initial secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran in 1985 that became part of the Iran-Contra scandal. More recently, he introduced his partner in that deal, Parisian-based Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, to two Farsi-speaking Pentagon officials, Lawrence A. Franklin and Harold Rhode, interested in discussing the regime change idea. In late August, the meetings drew new attention after it was reported that the FBI was investigating whether Franklin had passed the classified draft national security directive on Iran to officials with the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. In addition to Ghorbanifar (who is alleged to have long ties to both the Iranian and the Israeli governments), the meeting also included a former senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who reportedly had intelligence on dissident ranks within the Iranian security services.

more here: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/10/10/the_revolution_next_time?mode=PF

[oasis]

14. I gotta get the "New Yorker" for ther full story.

[mdmc]

18. I think that I might do the same.

[Gabi Hayes]

21. don't bother....see?

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact

[oasis]

30. Thanks Gabi Hayes.

:hi:

[Gabi Hayes]

31. it's HARD work....almost as hard as been preznitwit

I think maybe they're floating the nuke trial balloon, so when they drop all the daisy cutters people will be relieved it wasn't nukes

[oasis]

32. Murtha said " Action aganst Iran ain't gonna happen" a couple of Sunday's

ago. We're spread too thin. Gen. Zinni thinks attacking Iran would be a bad move also.

[Gabi Hayes]

37. agreed....BUT, and it's a but almost as big as Bush's ugly ass mommy's...

they are NOT above just bombing the crap out of them and seeing what happens, ala some other posts which say that the strategery is to try to foment civil unrest there

it does seem impossible to mount any sort of ground attack against Iraq, given the woefully undermanned forces we currently field

but, again, you know they're capable of anything, and their level of irrationality is unparalleled. they WILL do anything, and if this is what they think is necessary to retain power, I have no doubt that they'll try it

god help us for what they might have in store for US