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Sy Hersh at the <em>New Yorker</em> Festival, Part I

Sy Hersh at theFestival, Part I
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New Yorker
editor David Remnick interviewed the intense and dogged Seymour Hersh this past weekend during the
New Yorker
festival, who elaborated on his recent reporting regarding the Bush administration's plans for Iran (hint: going strong!) as well as on his thoughts on the Iraq war, America's place in the world, fact-checking recalcitrant sources, and the upcoming presidential election (to say he's looking forward to it is putting it mildly). Hersh told Remnick early on that "It doesn't matter what I think, it matters what I know and what I can learn," but Remnick managed to coax a few opinions out of him — not that it takes much coaxing to get him to talk. Our fingers were flying across our laptops to try and capture it all (we noted after that it was like the opposite of watching a presidential debate, in that so much was actually
said
), and as a result we've decided to publish this in two parts because there was just so much there. Here's the first part of our distillation — standby for his continued commentary on his sources, the U.S. and torture, the work of other journalists, and the stuff he doesn't write about. And blogs, because everyone's got an opinion about blogs. In the meantime, Part I.
    Signs the U.S. is getting ready to go into Iran:

  • Hersh referred to last week's announcement that North Korea had agreed to disable its nuclear facilities. "My friends tell me that they had to get North Korea off the plate so they can make a case." He referred to the lede of this NYT article, which asserts — unsourced — that the North Korea agreement may be a model for Iran. "I was told over a year ago that 'you gotta clear North Korea.'"
  • "They want to get the Brits on board — the Germans they'll never get, or the French." But the Brits, said Hersh, need to be moved out of the South of Iraq where they are sitting ducks for a hostage situation if there is a strike on Iran. Hersh said it would be a "warning light" if British soldiers started moving out of Iraq...which is precisely what was announced last week by British PM Gordon Brown, who pledged to remove 1000 troops from Basra by year's end. Said Hersh: "If you ever got rid of all the Brits that would be a warning light for me." (Presumably this is, too.)
  • One more warning light for Hersh: An Israeli election.



    • On Iran:

  • Remnick said that Iran had "won the Iraq war" (ouch), and asked: "What does Iran want from the Unite States?" Said Hersh: "Love!" A beat, for laughter, and then he elaborated: "We appreciate you, we will deal with you." Remnick: "To quote the poet, 'What does love got to do with it?'" (To misquote the poet, that is: Tina Turner favored the less-grammatical but more direct "What's love got to do with it?"). If love is a second-hand emotion, then Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a second-hand president: The mouthpiece and leader, but beholden to the will of the Ayatollah, and also, "he's a disaster...he's not very popular inside."
  • Follow-up, still from Hersh: "How do you go about expressing even tactical or strategic love? What is possible to give to a leader who makes the pronouncements he makes? What is the alternate stream of behavior? In this White House there is no alternate stream of behavior. This guy wants to do it. He personally wants to do it....I was told over a year ago that 'you gotta clear North Korea.'" See above re: warning signs.
  • Re: Nuclear proliferation: "They don't think the Iranians will stop 'til they get a bomb" (we think Hersh was referring to the Administration here). Intelligence indicates that Iran is "minimum five years away." So what, then, of non-proliferation? "In the Arab world what is said is, if Iran can develop this bomb, then surely Cairo, then..." [insert city here]. In other words, you're looking at the potential for "a fully nuclearized Middle East."



    • On Iraq:

  • Was General Petraeus' testimony scripted? "Of course that was scripted — and of course they cooked the numbers. Every army cooks the numbers."
  • The surge worked in Anbar province — in no small part because there were tens of thousands of Shia that were gone [via] ethnic cleansing... The surge works when you get rid of the opposition."
  • Also: If the surge is so effective then why pull back just as it's finally working? Hersh: "It's the equivalent of landing at Normandy, taking the beaches and then saying we're going to rotate out."
  • Notes that the medical journal Lancet estimates (conservatively) that the Iraqi death toll is 600,000; also, the Iraqi refugee crisis — displaced Iraqis now number almost 2 million now, in "horrific" camps in Lebanon and Syria. "Syria has this population of 17 million, and you've got these 2 million fifth column — these are all Sunnis coming in,many of them are Baathists. Nobody talks about it." Remnick points out that the New Yorker's George Packer did, in his most recent NYer article. Hersh clarifies: He's referring to the administration. "In the government it's not an issue — my friends are ashamed that it's not on the table." Upshot: Iraq has destablized the entire middle east.
  • "Are we in Iraq for a long long time?" "Oh my God yes!"

    On the Democrats:
  • Bluntly: "I think the Democrats are going to lose the election if they don't wake up." (Collective intake of breath from crowd. Duh. Who do you think they'll be voting for?) Why? Again, bluntly: Dems are playing straight into Republican strategy. They are agitating for troop reductions now, but "Bush's option is to come in next summer with a real low number." Suddenly the troops will be coming home and the Republicans will be responsible. That's what Hersh hears from "the inside": "We're winning the war next summer, we can campaign on it....I know that's being talked about in the White House."
  • "When did we start talking about this war in terms of morality?" (We don't think it was meant to be rhetorical, but Sy went off on tangents from his tangents — Remnick obviously knows his star writer well, seemed to know when to let him talk and when to bring him back on topic.) But he asked why the notion of the morality of the war didn't come up more in the Dem debate, which struck us as odd since that's so much part of the discourse. But he was talking about the actual Democratic debates, and he said that all the talk was about the failure of the Republicans and George W. Bush. Said Hersh: "What is depressing is how the candidates are not taking on some of the issues... Hillary in particular doesn't deal with [the morality issue]." (Oh, that damn vote. Casts a long shadow.)
  • Also: "We don't do war better than anyone else."
  • And: "I think we're pretty lost right now in this country, in terms of who we are and where we're going." Damn right he elaborates.

    • On the President:
  • "There's 471 days and 22 hours until the next president it sworn in That's all I think about. And tomorrow will be one less day."
  • For Hersh, it goes back to post-9/11: "What we needed then was tremendous moral leadership." According to Hersh, the country didn't get it — it got a culture of fear and paranoia, the kind of culture that caused a nation to turn a blind eye to Geneva Convention violations (he cites the treatment of John Walker Lindh after capture as an example). His sources, he said, cited those raw post-9/11 emotions to explain their fog-of-war behavior: "Payback. Anger. Fear." Said Hersh: "That was an attitude we all had. We were frightened, we were scared....we really needed tremendous moral leadership from our government." It was not forthcoming.
  • And there is a cost — ceding moral leadership in the world. "Our weight meant something. Even in terms of human rights. That's a serious sort of retrograde." Hersh mentioned Gitmo frequently in his remarks. "We're all going to be so ashamed when it all comes out about Gitmo. We're all going to be so ashamed at what was done in the name of America."
  • Remnick asks if, after the outrage over Abu Ghraib, Hersh found the the administration's response satisfying. We're not sure, but we think he may have snorted here. "You can just see from the Times story this week" [about the secret Justice Department legal opinions permitting torture-like interrogation of terrorism suspects]. Hersh: "We're journalists. We are in the business of words and words mean something to us... What's amazing about this president is words mean absolutely nothing to him. 'We don't torture.'" (Okay, we're pretty sure there was a snort in there somewhere.)
  • "This was the most revolutionary president we've ever had...he thinks he can transform the Middle East." The word "messaianic" comes up a few times. "He's uneducable - when you have someone who is a true revolutionary he can't be educated"
  • "When you have a president like this who walks all over the system...what's happened now with this president he's really demonstrated the fragility of democracy."

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