Seymour Hersh Interview | David Barsamian | April 2005 Issue

"Born in Chicago, Hersh began his career in 1959 as a police reporter for the City News Bureau. He later worked for UPI, AP, and The New York Times. Since 1993, he's been at The New Yorker. His piece on neocon stalwart Richard Perle, "Lunch with the Chairman," provoked Perle to call him the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." Perle threatened to sue him for libel but later backed off. Recently, Max Boot, another neocon favorite, called him "the journalistic equivalent of Oliver Stone: a hard-left zealot who subscribes to the old counterculture conceit that a deep, dark conspiracy is running the U.S. government." For Hersh, their criticism is a sign he's doing his job."

Or maybe it's just a sign that he's an annoying twerp.

"I can't tell you whether they are technically breaking the law, but basically, the American government has been hijacked by neoconservatives."

Who were all elected by their respective constituencies.

"Bush certainly sees himself as having been given an endorsement."

He was elected, right?

"He was asked about accountability in an interview, about why Rumsfeld, Rice, and Wolfowitz have been promoted, these people who led us into the debacle in Iraq. Bush said there was accountability--it was the election. So there we are."

Ah.

"I'm worried about people who say Bush is lying. It's much more frightening that he's not lying, that he believes what he believes: that it's his mission to change the Middle East into a democracy. That's more unnerving."

God forbid we should get one honest politician in my lifetime.

"We'd be better off if the whole purpose of the adventure in Iraq was, say, to protect Israel or to protect the flow of oil to America and keep it at a reasonable price and try to get some more control."

Or, "I can understand if he's a dirty rotten money-grubber who just wants cheap gas, but he actually wants to bring democracy to the Middle East! That's crazy!"

"Q: What will it take for a majority of Americans to say no more torture, stop the war in Iraq?

Hersh: You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what a majority of Americans say."

I think it has already been said.

For more comments that are much more well-thought-out and eloquent than I am capable of, check out this article at Countercolumn.