Iraq : journalist says insurgency has and will use missiles

Seymour Hersh gives an inside view of Iraq and foreign policy
Journalist says insurgency has and will use missiles

By Daniela Perdomo

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, who most recently broke the story of the abuses at the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib with the CBS news program "60 Minutes," gave a scathing portrait of U.S. policy in Iraq in the Terrace Room on Friday.

"Let’s begin by questioning the word ’democracy,’" Hersh said by way of introduction, hinting at what would prove to be an animated discussion on current American policy in Iraq.

"Bush is out there every day telling us that everything [in Iraq] is going fine but we can see every day with our own eyes that that’s not what’s going on," he said.

Hersh accused the Bush administration of using the propaganda to promote fear and instill a mentality of "you’re either with us or against us" throughout the nation and around the globe.

He also claimed that many high-level government officials are starkly aware of the differences between fact and what the administration is telling the American public.

"There are people in the FBI, CIA, the White House that care about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and they’re increasingly concerned about their violation since Sept. 11," Hersh said. "How did we get to where we are?"

He said the Bush administration suffers from the same infamous "credibility gap" that plagued the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations during the Vietnam War.

Hersh is in a position to make the comparison - he famously broke the story of how Charlie Company, 11th Brigade massacred an entire village of unarmed Vietnamese civilians in My Lai.

His coverage of the event and its cover-up prompted worldwide outrage and helped turn the public’s opinion against American involvement in the escalating war n Southeast Asia and the administration waging it.

Hersh said the most dangerous aspect of the current administration is that President George W. Bush earnestly sees the war in Iraq as an ideological struggle. "He believes he’s doing the right thing for the right reasons - a crusade if you will," Hersh said.

"You could call him an idealist, a utopian - even a Trotskyist. After all, [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz believes in permanent revolution," Hersh said.

Contrary to popular opinion, Hersh said, "Bush didn’t go to Iraq for oil, for Israel. He really believes this [ideology] - that’s why he’s so dangerous. In that sense [Henry] Kissinger was safer - he knew Vietnam was a mistake."

Hersh acknowledged oil as a factor in the Iraq war, but said the Bush administration "is really driven by the idea of democracy, to protect it ... I’m convinced it wouldn’t be on such a stupid thing as oil."

He said the events of Sept. 11 provided the Bush administration and its neoconservative advisers, such as former chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Commission Richard Perle and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, with the justification they needed to enter Iraq.

Drawing further parallels to the Vietnam conflict, Hersh said that the current Iraqi coalition government is a "puppet government that makes [former South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh] Diem look like a strongman."

"What keeps the Iraqi government [in power] is American bombing - continuous, overnight, daylong bombing," he said, adding that the American media has not brought this escalating bombing to the forefront of public consciousness.

If Bush is re-elected, Hersh said the bombing will continue. He recalled a phrase a U.S. army officer serving in Vietnam told then-Associated Press journalist Peter Arnett: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

Though he made it no secret that he is planning on casting his vote for John Kerry tomorrow, Hersh was also clearly skeptical of the challenger’s approach to fighting the war in Iraq.

"Kerry wants our allies to play a bigger role - it’ll just change the color or nationality of the corpses in Iraq," he said. "At least in 1968 Nixon campaigned to end the war. Neither Bush nor Kerry wants to get out, but the idea is at least Kerry has fresh eyes."

"The world knows there’s a difference between Bush and the U.S. people, but if he’s re-elected, all bets are off," Hersh said. "If Bush wins again, the Europeans will organize against us - after all they’re closer to the madness. They already think it’s time to end the U.S. role as the sole broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Hersh was candid about his concern that this war in Iraq will continue to escalate for an indefinite amount of time. "We’ve never been in a worse position, not even in the Vietnam War," he said.

The situation is complicated by a piece of information Hersh has not yet published in The New Yorker - that reliable sources both inside and outside Iraq confirm that the Iraqi insurgency has missiles. "The next step will be a direct attack on our troops," he said.

Due to the depth and breadth of the insurgency, and its offensive capabilities, Hersh said the United States must be ready to negotiate. "The insurgency isn’t just concentrated in the Sunni Triangle - they’re all over," Hersh said.

Similarly to the Vietnam War, the current administration does not understand the culture of the people whose country they are fighting in and claim to be fighting for. "There is obvious U.S. racism," Hersh said.

He said that Bill Clinton was the first American president to "bomb white people since World War II," a reference to the Balkan conflict of the late 1990s.

Such statements are what Hersh calls his "alternate history of the United States," which he says he began with his coverage of the My Lai massacre.

When Hersh opened the floor to questions, the room became noticeably tense as a Bush supporter who identified himself as a construction worker working at Tufts said the United States’ invasion of Baghdad was necessary to stop terrorism from "coming back home."

Hersh eventually told the man he "agreed to disagree."

He later told the Daily that the man’s statements "showed how ignorant the public is, how they don’t know what’s really going on."

A Daily reporter asked about the multiple anonymous sources in Hersh’s Abu Ghraib articles, for which he has been criticized. Hersh replied that quoting anonymous sources "is not a new phenomenon" and the validity of his sources should be judged on how correct his previous articles have been.

When a student questioned Hersh’s earlier statement that he has about 200 pictures of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib that were never published, he said, "What more do you need to show?"

He referred to the grisly contents of the unreleased materials, adding that the United States defines torture as excruciating pain resulting in organ loss or death. "The rest is fair game," he said.

"The worst thing is it’s not over - Guantanamo [Bay Prison in Cuba] is going to make Andersonville [Civil War Prison] look easy," Hersh said.

Hersh’s lecture was sponsored by the Institute of Global Leadership and its Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship program, whose theme this year is "Oil and Water."

He previously spoke at Tufts in 1988 on the Iran-contra scandal.

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