Sy Hersh’s new New Yorker article “Up in the Air” .

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 27 2005 22:00 utc | 4

Transcript of the frightening Hersh interview.

BLITZER: In this new article you have in The New Yorker, you also write this about the president: ” ‘The president is more determined than ever to stay the course,’ the former defense official said. ‘He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, “People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.” ‘ He said that the president had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. ‘They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,’ the former defense official said.”
Could you be more specific on this former defense official?
HERSH: Sure, in this day and age, Wolf. No. I mean, that’s — we’re having a war over sourcing right now.
BLITZER: But this is someone who had day to day or contact, direct contact with the president?
HERSH: Suffice to say this, that this president in private, at Camp David with his friends, the people that I’m sure call him George, is very serene about the war. He’s upbeat. He thinks that he’s going to be judged, maybe not in five years or ten years, maybe in 20 years. He’s committed to the course. He believes in democracy.
HERSH: He believes that he’s doing the right thing, and he’s not going to stop until he gets — either until he’s out of office, or he falls apart, or he wins.
BLITZER: But this has become, your suggesting, a religious thing for him?
HERSH: Some people think it is. Other people think he’s absolutely committed, as I say, to the idea of democracy. He’s been sold on this notion.
He’s a utopian, you could say, in a world where maybe he doesn’t have all the facts and all the information he needs and isn’t able to change.
I’ll tell you, the people that talk to me now are essentially frightened because they’re not sure how you get to this guy.
We have generals that do not like — anymore — they’re worried about speaking truth to power. You know that. I mean that’s — Murtha in fact, John Murtha, the congressman from Pennsylvania, which most people don’t know, has tremendous contacts with the senior generals of the armies. He’s a ranking old war horse in Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The generals know him and like him. His message to the White House was much more worrisome than maybe to the average person in the public. They know that generals are privately telling him things that they’re not saying to them.
And if you’re a general and you have a disagreement with this war, you cannot get that message into the White House. And that gets people unnerved.
BLITZER: Here’s what you write. You write, “Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.”
Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically doesn’t want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.
HERSH: You know, Wolf, there is people I’ve been talking to — I’ve been a critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are suddenly saying something much more alarming.
They’re beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago.
I don’t want to sound like I’m off the wall here. But the issue is, is this president going to be capable of responding to reality? Is he going to be able — is he going to be capable if he going to get a bad assessment, is he going to accept it as a bad assessment or is he simply going to see it as something else that is just a little bit in the way as he marches on in his crusade that may not be judged for 10 or 20 years.
He talks about being judged in 20 years to his friends. And so it’s a little alarming because that means that my and my colleagues in the press corps, we can’t get to him maybe with our views. You and you can’t get to him maybe with your interviews.
How do you get to a guy to convince him that perhaps he’s not going the right way?
Jack Murtha certainly didn’t do it. As I wrote, they were enraged at Murtha in the White House.
And so we have an election coming up — Yes. I’ve had people talk to me about maybe Congress is going to have to cut off the budget for this war if it gets to that point. I don’t think they’re ready to do it now.
But I’m talking about sort of a crisis of management. That you have a management that’s seen by some of the people closely involved as not being able to function in terms of getting information it doesn’t want to receive.

Scary

Posted by: b | Nov 27 2005 22:23 utc | 6

down in the bunker, berlin feb – may 1945
perhaps gauleiter rove will offer his service as field marshall
& rumsfield will lead the mast divisions over the wall
this is vietnam writ marge, fast & extremely insane

Posted by: r’giap | Nov 27 2005 22:55 utc | 8

In a word Oh Fuck! This is a scenario that has been possible since ‘superpowers’ evolved. That someone in charge is so distanced from reality that they can’t be reached by anything, especially not tiresome things like ‘facts’.
When Nixon’s egoism surfaced delusionally and he was talking to the portraits of dead presidents around his home, didn’t the secretary of defense send out an instruction that to the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to do anything the commander in chief ordered without checking it out with him first?
This mob not only lack anyone with the clarity of vision to do that they would be spending too much time getting the Attorney General to give them an opinion on whether they could get between the JCS and C in C to be effective evn if they did.
Masada? Was that the name of the place where the Jewish soldiers committed mass suicide/homicide not just of themselves but also of all the people living there?
Someone needs to take Bushie and his fellow travellers to a west bank settlement and persuade him that the only way forward is to blow the settlement, the invaders and himself up.
All the other alternatives are eiher much worse or unlikely to be implemented. IE the VP getting Bush carted off in a straitjacket or the marines storming Pennsylvania Ave.
Sy may just be feeling a need to express his frustration by scaring the living shit outta us.
If the world somehow gets outta this, is it possible for the US to quit investing so much power in one very ordinary human being?
I mean the ‘Old Europe’ that these amerikan technocrats hold in so much contempt, ceased that error many years ago.
Psst…! Hey George, the pistol is in the top left hand drawer.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 27 2005 23:29 utc | 10

Redeployment does not mean total withdrawal. Withdrawal does not mean total withdrawal. Both the Repugs and the Dems, including prior to Bush&Co, till today and into the future have a fixed geopolitical commitment to ‘success’ in Iraq and dominance of the wider ME & Central Asia. None of the proposed plans envisage less than an entrenched military rump, worst case …
So, the casualties have upset the domestic audience ? Well, they will change methods and tactics yet the objectives remain the same … they’re simply going to try to minimize American military casualties to muffle that ‘aspect’ of the anti-war domestic audience …
Hm, we seem to be approaching Vietnam ’70-71 equivalence now … how long till further escalation and a widening of the war(s), especially from the air, as the troops draw down (but never actually entirely leave) and the covert invasions and bombings of Laos (Iran ?) and Cambodia (Syria ?) commence … the wider ME is a powderkeg and we just keep cuttin’ the fuse shorter and shorter whilst aggressively reinforcing our pariah (nation) status … Vietnam on crack x 2 indeed …

“HELLO, DAVID”
Hello, David–my name is Dusty.
I’m your night nurse.
I will stay with you.
I will check your vitals
every 15 minutes.
I will document
inevitability.
I will hang more blood
and give you something
for your pain.
I will stay with you
and I will touch your face.
Yes, of course,
I will write your mother
and tell her you were brave.
I will write your mother
and tell her how much you loved her.
I will write your mother
and tell her to give your bratty kid sister
a big kiss and hug.
What I will not tell her
is that you were wasted.
I will stay with you
and I will hold your hand.
I will stay with you
and watch your life
flow through my fingers
into my soul.
I will stay with you
until you stay with me.
Goodbye, David—my name is Dusty.
I’m the last person
you will see.
I’m the last person
you will touch.
I’m the last person
who will love you.
So long, David–my name is Dusty.
David–who will give me something
for my pain?
– Dusty, Army Nurse Corps, Vietnam Veteran, Republic of Vietnam

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 27 2005 23:50 utc | 12

Bombing for Peace
On Monday night, January 20, 2006, Bush met first with Congressional leaders, and then went on national television, to explain his decision to mine the Syrian and Iranian harbors and intensify bombing throughout the insurgent dominated areas of Iraq. He also reiterated U.S. determination to win ‘The Global War on Terra'(sic).
Privately, he was determined to bring Iraqi ‘terrorists’ to thier knees. Bush wrote in a memo later that evening:
“I cannot emphasize too strongly that I have determined that we should go for broke … Needless to say, indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas is not what I have in mind. On the other hand, if the target is important enough, I approve a plan that goes after it even if there is a risk of civilian casualties. We have the power. The only question is whether we have the will to use that power. What distinguishes me, is that I have the will in spades.”
Unedited source here.

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 28 2005 0:29 utc | 14

How does one help people realise that any bombing is a crime against humanity. Yes trite phrase ‘crime against humanity’. However dropping bombs from nthousand feet on targets that may or may not contain ordinary people going about their business certainly qualifies. The biggest obstacle is that for citizens to accept that simple precept they are also going to have to accept that the previous bombing missions from Dresden through Berlin to Nagasaki and then onto Hanoi, Libya and Belgrade were also criminal.
But if our objective is to stop any more of these crimes from being committed, then the obvious solution is amnesty for everyone in the past. Yep that would have to include Milosovic and Saddam Hussein.
Can people accept that farmers forming an angry mob and decapitating or hanging a heroic aviator is the act of a reasonable community thrust into an inhumane situation?
History suggests that if the colonists do follow this path they will not only ‘get away with it’ in that the bulk of their populace will accept this horror but even worse they will be ultimately unsuccessful. As we have discussed before laying a town under siege increases resistance and committment—>increases bombing—>increases resistance, so it goes…

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 28 2005 1:13 utc | 16

@DiD
re –> increasing ‘resistance’ …

A Doctor Works
A doctor works on an unconscious woman,
a teenager in black VC battle dress, she
lies on a cot, jagged edged holes
in her chest bubbling bright
red.
Her eyes flutter, open and unglaze. She
sees his white face, her open shirt,
the scarlet blossoms blooming on
her brown skin and, in a
rush of hate, spits red
flecked sputum
at him and
dies.
He, trying manfully to restart that stuck
heart, her carmine gesture sliding
down his pale cheeks, his eyes
telling of his injured pride,
says, through clenched
teeth,
“Who are these fucking people?
Don’t they realize
I only want to
help?”
– Paul Kohl, Poet, Army Medic, Vietnam Veteran

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 28 2005 1:26 utc | 18

outraged
where are the poems from?
i used to have an anthology of poems written by vietnamese warriors with the same stillness – the same simple beauty

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 28 2005 1:45 utc | 20

The posting you limked above Uncle is right on the money. The security state is the next step and it’s further along than many suspect. The legislative ability of congress has already been deminished by Gatt and Nafta using tribunals and the Codex Alimentarius system to usurp congressional powers.
Elites want rule by corporations and NGO’s. Elites control the NGO’s by funding them, they put out the ideas and the federal government or other governments rubber stamp them. This is a very insidious way of changing things. It sure isn’t our moron president or those idiots in congress that dream up all of this bullshit thats happening.
The real test of groupthink that leads to this kind of sheeple control is to look at the rolls of such organizations as the CFR and the Tri-Lats. Many government, media and corporate leaders are members of the these organizations and promote the agenda.
We are truely living in odd times and the fruit of the CFR and Tri-lats plans are coming onto being. This is no conspiracy, it’s like an elite good ol boys club that believe what their doing is right and the sheeple should just shut up and go along for the ride. GWB was on the Tri-Lat commission. You don’t really think that idiot got where he is without being annointed.

Posted by: jdp | Nov 28 2005 2:37 utc | 22

Fantastic News from Hersh. He’s saying that Boy george is Medically Incapable of Carrying out His Duties & Needs to Be Removed From Office for that Reason.
Conveniently it’s coming out around Iraq, so Cindy & Co. Should Build the Mvmt. around that.
Stay Tuned. (If They don’t remove him…, we’re well & truly fucked.)
If Cindy & Co. started demanding Removal on Grounds of Medical Incapacitation, would Europeans take up the cry?

Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2005 2:42 utc | 24

“Once something happens, then you will be ready.”

Posted by: DM | Nov 28 2005 4:29 utc | 26

@outraged I think the Brotherhood getting up is a good thing if only because it must demonstrate to Mubarek the simple axiom that repression breeds insurrection. Yes there will be some staunch fundies amongst them but if this party is anything like the Islam Party in Algeria which won an election which was then discounted lest the French lose control, it will be a pretty broad church made up of people of a wide variety of beliefs who have one thing in common.
They are sick of living in a one party state that is neither caring nor honest.
It must also be the final nail in the coffin for the Rice/Cheney plan of democratizing the Mid East to guarantee a pro-western administration.
They must have caught on by now. That not everyone in the world shares their love of material things to the detriment of anything else.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 28 2005 5:00 utc | 28

@outraged How the middle east treats with the US once the ME gets the freedom it seeks will be far more a function of US reaction to them than any thirst for vengeance.
For example two ends of the spectrum both Cuba and Iran wanted to maintain a viable relationship with the US. Yes they wanted justice for their people but really only to try the cubans or Iranians involved in the horror.
There was an attempt at pragmatism in foreign policy by both Castro and Kohemini.
I will conceed that Iran didn’t want to bank with Citibank any longer but they would have been happy to shift their funds to any other US institution which wasn’t so intimately involved with the shah and his thugs.
The US chose to play the bully.
I don’t know why they do this because although they try and insinuate that their attitude towards both Cuba and Iran is a function of public sentiment as far as I can see the public were persuaded to that point of view by intensive propaganda.
There is no rhyme or reason to it. The sleazy senators repug and demopublican still try and cause trouble in NZ and are always plotting some silly facile interference in NZ domestic politics even though the state department mostly no longer supports it.
The argument is 20 years old for god’s sake NZ’s crime? Asking the US not to sent any nuclear powered or nuclear equipped naval vessels here.
I believe the pendulum would have swung back years ago except the level of interference in NZ domestic politics has been so intrusive that everybody both left and right in NZ doesn’t want to feel like they’ve given into the bullying.
In other words the crime hasn’t been to deny access to nuclear vessels the crime was to try and stand up to their demands.
It’s not only a very childish attitude you can’t argue that pragmatically the US had to do it lest others not toe the line.
THe arguement won’t run because US foriegn policy has been to destabilise and marginalise NZ yet all that has happened is to increase the credibility of NZ’s position, not just within this country. Other countries especially third world ones and even thinking peole in the US have come to the erroneous conclusion that kiwis are an honest bunch of whitefellas. NZ is always copping requests to provide numbers to UN peacekeeping forces, their sleazy politicians are doing a huge trade in chairing international bodies once they retire from politics.
The developing world regards them as the best of a bad bunch and the other whitefellas know that they’ll probably ‘do the right thing’.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 28 2005 6:04 utc | 30

Video: Contractors Open Fire On Civilians .

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 28 2005 8:40 utc | 32

The new Hersh piece is now up at The New Yorker:
UP IN THE AIR Where is the Iraq war headed next?

Posted by: b | Nov 28 2005 12:58 utc | 34

From the Hersh piece linked above

Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”

Posted by: b | Nov 28 2005 13:21 utc | 36

CIFA: The Pentagon’s COINTELPRO
The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts—including protecting military facilities from attack—to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 28 2005 17:43 utc | 38