Seymour Hersh's Nov. 30 lecture at Princeton University is finally available online and well worth 90 minutes of quiet time with a cup of coffee. You might want a bottle of aspirin, too, to deal with the outrage headache you might get as this reporter's reporter runs down what he had/has on the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the rise of the Iraqi insurgency and the lies that greased the path for the American invasion.
Hersh, who made his career as the man who exposed the My-Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, has been one of the leading journalists covering the Iraq War.
Hersh's Nov. 30 speech got some cursory coverage at the time, but nobody captured every detail and nuance of this gem-studded lecture and the followup questions, which are refreshingly articulate and pertinent. (For some reason, there were no partisans in the audience to rave about "liberal media bias" — Hersh's reliance on facts makes partisans avoid him the way vampires shy away from garlic and crucifixes.)
Some of the (randomly chosen) tidbits include:
* The difficulty of getting Americans to accept the stories about atrocities in Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and Afghanistan: "How can you go up against the American myth: 'We're not the Nips or the Krauts, we don't fight wars differently.'"
* There is no way to gauge oil production in Iraq. There is no transparency or reliable monitoring, and a colossal amount of theft takes place, so pronouncements about increased oil production are all vapor.
* Libya, supposedly cowed by the hardline Bush approach, abandoned its defunct nuclear program and aided the war on terror by providing a list of al-Qaeda terrorists — all of whom, strangely enough, turned out to be opponents of Qadaffi. Yet another war on terror ally like Pakistan that is playing us for a bunch of suckers.
Article comments
1 - SFC SKI
I gotta cal BS on this,"Traveling at high speed along unlit village roads at about 80 mph, the convoys regularly run down scores of villagers without stopping "
IF this was so commonplace, how come no other reporter has commented on it?
2 - gonzo marx
Ski raises an excellent point when he sez...
*IF this was so commonplace, how come no other reporter has commented on it?*
it is possibly because none have seen it, or that it is not as common as one reporter thought
another might be due to a similar symptomology as the "Stockholm syndrome" wherein embedded reporters( the ONLY ones who seem to be able to get into the field consistently) so identify and are bonded with the troops they are living with, that such things are not noticed, or do not clear "editorial censorship" for one reason or another
due ot Hersh's credentials, i do no tthink it is an easy thing to dismiss his observations and assertations
but in the end, it IS just one man's experience and might not be indicicative of any widespread trends, but rather accurate observations via a single "lens" of a reporter's direct perception
your mileage may vary
Excelsior!
3 - SFC SKI
"it is possibly because none have seen it, or that it is not as common as one reporter thought"
Or it could be that Hersh is flat out sensationalizing a lie, or he doesn't know when some grunt is pulling his leg.
I ran a lot of convoys around Iraq, we never hit hit anyone, intentionally or otherwise, and if we had, we'd have been up on charges the minute we got back to base. He's not reporting a afact, but an anecdote as far as I am concerned
4 - gonzo marx
Ski, with all due Respect...
might i suggest that my statement about one person's Perspective and Observations applies to you as well as Hersh
all i am attempting to say is that no single person has a View of the entire Picture, nor all the details
fair enough?
Excelsior!
5 - SFC SKI
gonzo, I'll grant you that, BUT, Hersh throws out info like he is some subject matter expert, he REPORTS it as a fact, not an anecdote. In doing so, he alludes that it is known condoned and unpunished not just by that one troop who told him the story, but that troop's entire chain of command ignores it. A convoy is not one or 2 guys on a joyride, there are many people on each convoy, so if no one reports it, is it some conspiracy? Hersh sees My Lai in everything he reports regarding the military.
6 - Triniman
The Princeton online lecture was interesting. Also check out his Oct., 2005, lecture at Berkley. There's about 36 minutes of preabmle that you may want to skip.
The bit about the trucks running down villagers at night is interesting and it should be questioned, but also investigated, before being taken as fact.
7 - SFC SKI
Not to hammer this innto the ground, but Hersh has, like Eason Jordan before him, made an incredible statement that if true is almost as big a deal as Abu Ghraib, yet has not backed it up. Why?
8 - Aaman
I would agree, soldiers might be practicing war tactics on XBox games, but they surely know the difference between Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and GTA: Fallujah
9 - SFC SKI
No doubt some modder will soon create that game.
10 - jimbo
It is interesting how willing audiences at Princeton and Berkely, and probably much of the media, are to buy into the theme that US soldiers and marines are just a bunch of dumb redneck cowboys.
11 - troll
Hersh describes an 'airwar' that's eating up tons of ordinance daily and is hardly mentioned in the MSM or blogs
is it for real...if so:
1. where are the bombs going?
2. who is producing them?
troll
12 - Baronius
Calling Hersh "the reporter's reporter" can only be self-parody. Hersh has admitted to making up stories in the past. His first priority is to The Left, his second is to sensationalism.
Hersh has milked one story his whole career - and without denying the My Lai massacre, there is some debate over Hersh's reporting of it. Funny how the American soldiers are massacring villagers, the terrorists are using Viet Cong tactics, and no one believes Hersh about Abu Ghraib. Almost like he's rewriting his old articles. (Who doesn't believe there was torture in Abu Ghraib?) Let me guess: Hersh also thinks the US is falsifying casualty reports. Steven said it best: "A lot of this will probably be familiar to you".
13 - Scott Butki
Where has he ever said he made up stories?
14 - Eric Berlin
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