Seymour Hersh interview on Wolf Blitzer Reports (DU Wolf's poll, too) -MP3

[Wonk]

Pulitzer-Prize winner Seymour Hersh broke one of the major stories of the Vietnam War. Now, he's reporting on a covert campaign in Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/wolf.blitzer.reports/

1 M mp3

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. And he is getting air time

My, he is saying what many of us are saying

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. And he is getting air time

My, he is saying what many of us are saying

[eek]

3. he's getting around to-day! NPR earlier

I'll go root around for a link; NPR archives aplenty.
Worth listening.

[tinnypriv]

4. NPR

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1544171

[Wonk]

5. Here's that NewYorker article

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/

The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that the main target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies. A new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members, Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to report by January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination.

The revitalized Special Forces mission is a policy victory for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has struggled for two years to get the military leadership to accept the strategy of what he calls ÒManhuntsÓÑa phrase that he has used both publicly and in internal Pentagon communications. Rumsfeld has had to change much of the PentagonÕs leadership to get his way. ÒKnocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things,Ó a Pentagon adviser told me, referring to Afghanistan and Iraq.

One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the war against the Iraqi insurgency from Israel, AmericaÕs closest ally in the Middle East. According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisersÑagain, in secretÑwhen full-field operations begin. (Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. ÒNo one wants to talk about this,Ó an Israeli official told me. ÒItÕs incendiary. Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli cošperationÓ on Iraq.) The critical issue, American and Israeli officials agree, is intelligence. There is much debate about whether targeting a large number of individuals is a practicalÑor politically effectiveÑway to bring about stability in Iraq, especially given the frequent failure of American forces to obtain consistent and reliable information there.

MUCH MORE...
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/031215fa_fact

[Stephanie]

6. Here's his new article, about the new policy of targetted assassinations

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/

MOVING TARGETS
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?
Issue of 2003-12-15
Posted 2003-12-08

<excerpt>

One of the key planners of the Special Forces offensive is Lieutenant General William (Jerry) Boykin, Cambone’s military assistant. After a meeting with Rumsfeld early last summer—they got along “like two old warriors,” the Pentagon consultant said—Boykin postponed his retirement, which had been planned for June, and took the Pentagon job, which brought him a third star. In that post, the Pentagon adviser told me, Boykin has been “an important piece” of the planned escalation. In October, the Los Angeles Times reported that Boykin, while giving Sunday-morning talks in uniform to church groups, had repeatedly equated the Muslim world with Satan. Last June, according to the paper, he told a congregation in Oregon that “Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.” Boykin praised President Bush as a “man who prays in the Oval Office,” and declared that Bush was “not elected” President but “appointed by God.” The Muslim world hates America, he said, “because we are a nation of believers.”

There were calls in the press and from Congress for Boykin’s dismissal, but Rumsfeld made it clear that he wanted to keep his man in the job. Initially, he responded to the Times report by praising the General’s “outstanding record” and telling journalists that he had neither seen the text of Boykin’s statements nor watched the videotape that had been made of one of his presentations. “There are a lot of things that are said by people in the military, or in civilian life, or in the Congress, or in the executive branch that are their views,” he said. “We’re a free people. And that’s the wonderful thing about our country.” He added, with regard to the tape, “I just simply can’t comment on what he said, because I haven’t seen it.” Four days later, Rumsfeld said that he had viewed the tape. “It had a lot of very difficult-to-understand words with subtitles which I was not able to verify,” he said at a news conference, according to the official transcript. “So I remain inexpert”—the transcript notes that he “chuckles” at that moment—“on precisely what he said.” Boykin’s comments are now under official review.

Boykin has been involved in other controversies as well. He was the Army combat commander in Mogadishu in 1993, when eighteen Americans were slain during the disastrous mission made famous by Mark Bowden’s book “Black Hawk Down.” Earlier that year, Boykin, a colonel at the time, led an eight-man Delta Force that was assigned to help a Colombian police unit track down the notorious drug dealer Pablo Escobar. Boykin’s team was barred by law from providing any lethal assistance without Presidential approval, but there was suspicion in the Pentagon that it was planning to take part in the assassination of Escobar, with the support of American Embassy officials in Colombia. The book “Killing Pablo,” an account, also by Mark Bowden, of the hunt for Escobar, describes how senior officials in the Pentagon’s chain of command became convinced that Boykin, with the knowledge of his Special Forces superiors, had exceeded his authority and intended to violate the law. They wanted Boykin’s unit pulled out. It wasn’t. Escobar was shot dead on the roof of a barrio apartment building in Medellín. The Colombian police were credited with getting their man, but, Bowden wrote, “within the special ops community . . . Pablo’s death was regarded as a successful mission for Delta, and legend has it that its operators were in on the kill.”

<more>

[eleny]

7. Voted - thanks

[otohara]

8. Is This The Same SH Who Was on Democracy Now The Other Day

no way -

the guy on that MP3 was not SH. His voice changed, his message changed - being on corporate cable news channel changed this man from the one who spoke at length on Democracy Now the other day -

Whaaaa happened?

[Wonk]

9. Yes. Here's a link to that Democracy Now interview

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/09/162219

He was also on Washington Journal yesterday
http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&Page=2

Thread about this in the Editorials forum

[Wonk]

10. kick

[teryang]

11. Torturers for Saddam now working for us

It was pretty obvious that it was going to come to this.

The collective punishment policy of American troops is also repugnant.