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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (149285)	10/27/2004 11:12:47 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Bush has put our county in such a Quagmire over in Iraq...here's an interesting article from today's Toledo Blade newspaper... My Lai, Abu Ghraib reporter at UM Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh critiques Bush, Kerry on Iraq war By JOE MAHR BLADE STAFF WRITER Article published Wednesday, October 27, 2004 toledoblade.com The Washington reporter walked up to the Indiana chicken farm in 1969 to talk to a former soldier about his role in executing hundreds of unarmed civilians at a small hamlet known as My Lai. The ex-soldier's mother met the reporter at the door: "I gave them a good boy," she told the reporter, "and they sent me back a murderer." That reporter, Seymour Hersh, who won the Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the My Lai massacre, told the story yesterday to about 500 at the University of Michigan as an example of how some things don't change. After Mr. Hersh broke the story on Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, an Army reservist who served at the prison returned home to get a divorce, move away, and cover her body with black tattoos. Her mother complained to Mr. Hersh about her daughter's actions, and showed him prison torture photos retrieved from her daughter's laptop computer. "This is real stuff, and we often don't see it that way," Mr. Hersh said. "We see the macro. We often don't see the micro." A writer for The New Yorker magazine, Mr. Hersh spoke for 90 minutes at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater. In that talk and in an interview with The Blade, the controversial reporter discussed issues ranging from John Kerry's anti-war activism to the current administration's handling of the Iraq war. Mr. Kerry has come under attack for saying in 1971 that U.S. troops committed widespread war crimes in Vietnam. Mr. Kerry says he never said that all soldiers committed crimes but that atrocities did repeatedly occur. Mr. Hersh agreed, pointing not only to the My Lai massacre but also to the 1967 Tiger Force atrocities written about in The Blade last year. "The notion that John Kerry is wrong when he says there was systematic and serious war crimes is ridiculous. Of course he was right. People cut off ears. People did what they did," Mr. Hersh said. But he says the real issues are Iraq and the war on terrorism. While the Vietnam War's losses were tragic, the war was a "tactical error" for the United States. "The national security of the United States was not at stake," he said. "This war [on terrorism] is strategic in that we're dealing with people that can hurt us, that can put the core of the United States at stake." And the Bush administration has mishandled the war in Iraq, he said. Author of a book on Iraq called Chain of Command, Mr. Hersh said a core group of administration advisers shunned career government analysts who disagreed with the group's preconceived notions of whether and how the U.S. should attack Iraq. Mr. Hersh is also critical of Mr. Kerry's plan to rely more on Special Forces troops, whom Mr. Hersh said are close to being burnt out from heavy duties in Afghanistan and Iraq. To get out of Iraq, Mr. Hersh advocates holding an international convention to include Syria, Iran, and insurgent leaders to truly find a diplomatic solution. " … Unless [Mr. Kerry] gets down to the core of what's at stake, the insurgency will attack the people we bring in as peacekeepers," he said, "and then we're really in a no-win situation." Contact Joe Mahr at: jmahr@theblade.com or 419-724-6180.