-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 30, 2007 10:06:13 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: HERSH: Not Learning from History (or Anything Else)
Seymour Hersh: You have to ask yourself: what possible interest
did we have 40 years ago for going to war in Vietnam? You'd think
that, in this country, with so many smart people, we couldn't
possibly do the same dumb thing all over again. But no -- there's
no learning curve [in America].
DER SPIEGEL: If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the U.S.,
will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did?
Hersh: Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake; this is
strategic. How do you repair lasting damage to whole cultures? On
the home front, though, we'll rationalize it away. We'll pretend
it never happened. There's no learning curve [in America] -- in a
couple of decades we'll be ready to fight another stupid war.
See what's new at AOL.com and Make AOL Your Homepage.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: September 30, 2007 9:34:40 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: HERSH: "The President Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing"
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they
don't have
any."-- Alice Walker
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,508394,00.html
INTERVIEW WITH INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST SEYMOUR HERSH --
"The President Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing"
September 28, 2007
[Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has consistently led the
way in telling
the story of what's really going on in Iraq and Iran. SPIEGEL
ONLINE spoke to
him about America's Hitler, Bush's Vietnam, and how the U.S. press
failed the
First Amendment.
Seymour Hersh began his career as a police reporter. But since
then, he has
risen to become one of the most important investigative journalists
in the
history of American journalism. Hersh first made a name for
himself in 1969 by
uncovering the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, for which he
won the 1970
Pulitzer Prize. Hersh has worked for the New Yorker since 1992 and
in 2004 was
instrumental in uncovering the U.S. military's abuses of prisoners
at the Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq. Hersh was in Berlin this week to accept the
Democracy
Prize handed out by the political journal, "Blätter für Deutsche und
Internationale Politik."]
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in
New York
(more...) for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he
said that he
is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic
weapons. How much
does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?
Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it's been underestimated how much the
International
Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) knows. If you follow what
(I.A.E.A. head
Mohamed) ElBaradei (more...) and the various reports have been
saying, the
Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4
percent purity,
which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor.
But the
I.A.E.A.'s best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or
something. The
Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The
I.A.E.A. has been
saying all along that they've been making progress but basically,
Iran is
nowhere. Of course, the U.S. and Israel are going to say you have
to look at the
worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a
bombing raid.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is this just another case of exaggerating the
danger in
preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to
the Iraq War?
Hersh: We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize
people. We had
Hitler and, since Hitler, we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev
and Mao and of
course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And
now we have
this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he's not nearly as powerful
inside the
country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have
direct control
over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they
would be the
ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.]
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where does this feeling of urgency that the U.S.
has with Iran
come from?
Hersh: Pressure from the White House. That's just their game.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What interest does the White House have in moving
us to the
brink with Tehran?
Hersh: You have to ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago
for going to
war in Vietnam. You'd think that in this country with so many
smart people, that
we can't possibly do the same dumb thing again. I have this theory
in life that
there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is
tabula rasa.
Everybody has to discover things for themselves.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Even after Iraq? Aren't there strategic reasons
for getting so
deeply involved in the Middle East?
Hersh: Oh no. We're going to build democracy. The real thing in
the mind of
this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a
model. He
absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a
disaster because
he lies like most people breathe, and you can't have that in public
life. But if
it were Kissinger this time around, I'd actually be relieved
because I'd know
that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But, in this
case, what you see
is what you get. This guy believes he's doing God's work.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the options in Iraq?
Hersh: There are two very clear options: Option A) Get everybody
out by midnight
tonight. Option B) Get everybody out by midnight tomorrow. The
fuel that keeps
the war going is us.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people have been saying that the U.S.
presence there is
a big part of the problem. Is anyone in the White House listening?
Hersh: No. The president is still talking about the "Surge" (eds.
The "Surge"
refers to President Bush's commitment of 20,000 additional troops
to Iraq in the
spring of 2007 in an attempt to improve security in the country.)
as if it's
going to unite the country. But the Surge was a con game of
putting additional
troops in there. We've basically Balkanized the place, building
walls and
walling off Sunnis from Shi'ites. And in Anbar Province, where
there has been
success, all of the Shi'ites are gone. They've simply split.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is that why there has been a drop in violence there?
Hersh: I think that's a much better reason than the fact that
there are a couple
more soldiers on the ground.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the lessons of the Surge (more...)?
Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president
has accepted
ethnic cleansing, whether he's talking about it or not. When he
first announced
the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties
together.
He's not saying that any more. I think he now understands that
ethnic cleansing
is what is going to happen. You're going to have a Kurdistan.
You're going to
have a Sunni area that we're going to have to support forever. And
you're going
to have the Shi'ites in the South.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the U.S. is over four years into a war that is
likely going
to end in a disaster. How valid are the comparisons with Vietnam?
Hersh: The validity is that the U.S. is fighting a guerrilla war
and doesn't
know the culture. But the difference is that at a certain point,
because of
Congressional and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no longer
tenable. But
these guys now don't care. They see it but they don't care.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the
U.S., will it
leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did?
Hersh: Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is
strategic. How do
you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though,
we'll
rationalize it away. Don't worry about that. Again, there's no
learning curve.
No learning curve at all. We'll be ready to fight another stupid
war in another
two decades.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of course, preventing that is partially the job of
the media.
Have reporters been doing a better job recently than they did in
the run-up to
the Iraq War?
Hersh: Oh yeah. They've done a better job since. But back then,
they blew it.
When you have a guy like Bush who's going to move the infamous
Doomsday Clock
forward, and he's going to put everybody in jeopardy and he's
secretive and he
doesn't tell Congress anything and he's inured to what we write.
In such a case,
we (journalists) become more important. The First Amendment failed
and the
American press failed the Constitution. We were jingoistic. And
that was a
terrible failing. I'm asked the question all the time: What
happened to my old
paper, the New York Times? And I now say, they stink. They missed
it. They
missed the biggest story of the time and they're going to have to
live with it.
[Interview conducted by Charles Hawley and David Gordon Smith]
---- Msg sent via CWNet -
http://www.cwnet.com/
www.ctrl.org
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