Fair and balanced, eh? Hersh seems more unbalanced than anything. The loon screamed we were going to invade Iran any day now, and then had to backpedal on his wack prediction.
Recently, the New Yorker had a "conversation" with Hersh, here are some excerpts:
HERSH: Because the nineteen guys are dead. Despite all the arrests we’ve made—of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others—I’m very skeptical of the information we’ve got from interrogations, basically because, once people get into the interrogation process, even today, the torture is such that they invent stories to make us happy
Now that is simply nutty. He's going to be skeptical of anything obtained from Al Queda prisoners because we torture them. I notice this skepticism on the left is very one-sided. The left is always skeptical of anything a democratic government claims in the War on Terror, be it the U.S. or Britain. But people like Hersh are never skeptical of any claim by our enemies, no matter how far-fetched. Now that's a nutty attitude.
If the Administration wants a role model for how to respond to grave abuses in terms of international terrorism, look at the Indian government and Mumbai, the train bombing there. The government treated it like a criminal activity. By going to war, instead of criminalizing what Osama bin Laden and his minions did—there’s no question that, in terms of military operations, this is the worst government in the history of America.
Does Hersh forget that this is exactly how the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was handled? What a shithead! File some subpoenas, some lawsuits, and declare victory. That's what Clinton did, and Bush had to clean up his mess.
This is a perfect example of the difference between Democrats and Republicans. To the Democrats, the War on Terror would just be "getting" Bin Laden, slapping handcuffs on three or four people, and they'd declare victory. Meanwhile the Republicans noticed that Islamic fascism is a global terror movement. It didn't end with those 19 hijackers on 9/11, and they've been trying to kill greater numbers of Americans and westerners to this day. The fact that they've failed doesn't mean these people are not a threat, it means we're doing a good job of nailing them. What Hersh suggests is precisely what would lead to more 9/11s. So much for his intellect.
HERSH: The evidence is, we’ve gained much less than people think we have, or at least than the Administration tells us, in terms of actionable intelligence.
Because people like Hersh and his buddies at the New York Times keep leaking all of our actionable intelligence! That's what happens when nuts like Seymour Hersh view our government as the enemy instead of the people who are trying to kill us.
The whole world was on our side after 9/11—most of the Muslim world, too, was shocked by the crazy activity—and, essentially, we’ve lost the moral authority, the moral edge we had.
That's a complete lie, and Hersh knows it. The Muslim world may sympathize, that's one thing. But acting against Muslim governments and despots? Well that's something entirely else, of course their support wouldn't extend to that. And it wasn't just the Muslims who don't like America. Hersh conveniently has a memory lapse, but I remember all the protests Bush incurred in Europe before 9/11.
It is incredible naivity to think the world will simply love America if we leave despots alone. Other countries begged us to intercede in places they dare not go, like Bosnia, and then withdraw their support when we go to some place like Iraq, which certainly had a dictator worth removing. If "love" of such fair-weather friends is what Hersh desires, then he's an idiot.
I grew up thinking that in America we always wore the white hat. It’s no longer so.
This guy is "fair and balanced"? Who are you kidding? With every sentence he declares that we are the bad guys, we are the enemy. He might as well be one of those nut Democrat protesters waving the sign "Bush #1 World Terrorist"! There's no difference.
. Sy, you mentioned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is described as the mastermind behind 9/11. He’s actually in U.S. custody. Why hasn’t he been brought to trial?
HERSH: Because the Administration has chosen not to do so. I think that one of the reasons is that at trial he would talk about how he was treated. If somebody would come into a courtroom describing the kind of treatment he’s reportedly had at the hands of the United States, a conviction might be very hard to get. We simply decided very early on that it was acceptable for us to be goons, and we’ve been goons. It still goes on. It is beyond stupidity.
Let's say Hersh is travelling on a plane. Sheik Mohammed has info that the plane will be destroyed, but he won't talk. Do we let Hersh die? That might not be a bad idea.
HERSH: I actually think things are much worse, in that a lot of very capable people have got disgusted and discouraged and have left, and I think that the new system set up by the 9/11 Commission is going to be a disaster, too. So I’m skeptical.
How much genius does it take to be a Monday-morning quarterback? There's nothing brilliant or special about Hersh's skepticism. He just says "I could do it better", but the lie comes through when he fails to say how. How would you do it better, Hersh? Just put out an arrest warrant for Bin Laden and sit around twiddling your thumbs? That would be a War on Terror that would not offend the French or Muslim mullahs, that's true. But it would also be a War on Terror where the United States would rightly be perceived as being afraid. And that's the last message I'd want to send to fanatics who want to kill as many westerners as they can.
DAVIDSON: The White House would say we have to give up some expectations about, say, the privacy of telephone calls, to make sure that 9/11 doesn’t happen again.
HERSH: There are ways to deal with that within the confines of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and this Administration chose not to do that, for whatever reason—for security, or because it didn’t want people to know what was going on. They’ve demonstrated a contempt for the Constitution. We really have a constitutional crisis. We’ve got a crisis in terms of what’s going on in Iraq: as Jon Lee said, a civil war is going on there; we just don’t want to use those words.
That's just nonsense. Another of Hersh's mistakes is to assume that all of America thinks like him and agrees that Bush is a despot who is going to destroy America, the Constitution, the world, etc. Most Americans don't agree with Hersh on any of that. Polls show Americans are dissatisfied with Bush on the war on terror, but that includes those of us who want Bush to do MORE, not less. Hersh makes the mistake the DNC made the past few elections, assuming all Americans hate Bush as much as they do. It's not so, and such hubris has led to their defeat repeatedly.
HERSH: Oh, my God—nobody would argue that. Nobody would say that. You’ve just heard thirty minutes of conversation about how we are perceived. We haven’t done the right thing in terms of reconstruction; we haven’t done the right thing in Iraq. There’s no conceivable way we’re in better shape. Why there hasn’t been an attack in the United States—I don’t have an answer for that, but I don’t believe that’s going to be a political vehicle for George W. Bush. We’re not stronger, in any sense, because we’re not nearly as respected, and the invincibility shield is gone.
But Hersh has always insisted we would be respected more if we did LESS in the War on Terror, and I wonder respect from whom is he thinking of? The Mullahs? Hezbollah? Syria? Iran? Saddam Hussein? Hersh can spend the rest of his life yearning for those people to love us more. Bush lives in the real world, he doesn't want the world to love us, just respect us. That's a crucial difference, Hersh, one your partisanship makes you blind to seeing.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/articles/060911on_onlineonly02
