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nathan28 wrote:I just heard on Democracy Now that he says there's summary executions of "detainees" taking place. Yesterday or the day before he said the Pentagon was forcing Obama's hand. Two years ago he swore we were going to invade Iran before Bush left office.
nathan28 wrote:I just heard on Democracy Now that he says there's summary executions of "detainees" taking place. Yesterday or the day before he said the Pentagon was forcing Obama's hand. Two years ago he swore we were going to invade Iran before Bush left office.
The journalist who helped break the story that detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were being tortured by their US jailers told an audience at a journalism conference last month that American soldiers are now executing prisoners in Afghanistan.
New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh also revealed that the Bush Administration had developed advanced plans for a military strike on Iran.
At the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva, Hersh criticized President Barack Obama, and alleged that US forces are engaged in "battlefield executions."
"I'll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan," Hersh said. "They're being executed on the battlefield. It's unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn't necessarily get reported. Things don't change.:
"What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban," Hersh added. "You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free.
"What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place," he continued. "Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now."
The video of Hersh was uploaded to Michael Moore's YouTube account Tuesday.
Hersh has a long history as an investigative journalist and worked for many years at The New York Times. In 1969, he broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
This video is from YouTube, broadcast May 11, 2010.
Nordic wrote:Why would anyone criticize Sy Hersch, unless they were a tool?
HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected - which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn't accepted - one of the items was why not…
There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don't we build - we in our shipyard - build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.
And it was rejected because you can't have Americans killing Americans. That's the kind of - that's the level of stuff we're talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected - uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they're mice training to be rats.
http://www.truthout.org/article/hersh-c ... lag-attack
“The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,” he said.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008 ... z0nkU08sUH
JackRiddler wrote:The December 2007 unauthorized release of the National Intelligence Estimate for Iran with its conclusions that there was no active nuclear weapons program in Iran is an event of greatly underestimated importance in our circles. To the Bushistas, it was a palace coup. It can't be known for sure that they would have struck Iran without resistance inside the Pentagon - they did after all reject Israeli pressure to strike or countenance an Israeli strike. But as Jeff says, the push back closed off a live option.
nathan28 wrote:I just heard on Democracy Now that he says there's summary executions of "detainees" taking place. Yesterday or the day before he said the Pentagon was forcing Obama's hand. Two years ago he swore we were going to invade Iran before Bush left office.
Sy Hersh reveals battlefield summary executions
Seymour Hersh, the report who brought the My Lai massacre to light during the Vietnam War, told an international gathering of journalists that he’s learned of summary battlefield executions of captives carried out by American and allied troops in Afghanistan.
If true, it’s murder and a war crime, and given Hersh’s track record, we should be demanding an investigation.
Recorded at the 6th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva two weeks ago. A quote:What they’ve done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban. You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they’re Taliban, you must turn them free. What it means is, and I’ve been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place. Well, if they can’t prove they’re Taliban, bam. If we don’t do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that’s going on now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z8zAKweYcQ
http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2 ... xecutions/
Jeff wrote:nathan28 wrote:I just heard on Democracy Now that he says there's summary executions of "detainees" taking place. Yesterday or the day before he said the Pentagon was forcing Obama's hand. Two years ago he swore we were going to invade Iran before Bush left office.
I don't think it's fair to call Hersh a tool. I mean, look, there's a distinction that needs to be made here between claims. Asserting that something has happened or is happening now is not commensurate with prediction. Nevertheless it was a sound one. The White House was pushing for war, and the Joint Chiefs pushed back. I wouldn't fault Hersh because that horror hasn't happened yet.
RocketMan wrote:I read somewhere (can't remember where) that Hersh has acknowledged that he is dependent on his inside "official" sources. That doesn't mean he's a "tool" per se, but it does mean that he is receiving information from sources with an extreme interest in tilting the story a certain way. And they're often anonymous.
elfismiles wrote:Man MinM, now everytime this page loads I get to hear "Stem Cell Research" and scramble to to hit the pause button...
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