A snip from the Seymour Hersh interview today on Democracy Now!:
<snip>AMY GOODMAN:As we continue our discussion with investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh. His latest piece is in The New Yorker magazine this week. It is called, “The Coming Wars: What the Pentagon Can Now Do In Secret” and talks about Pentagon plans to deal with Iran. Is it fair to say to attack Iran? Seymour Hersh?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Of course they're planning to attack Iran. The goal of the -- the, you know, what we always call the neo-conservatives -- the Paul Wolfowitzes and Doug Feiths in the Pentagon, the civilian leadership in the Pentagon. Their theory is: Look, one of the things They’ve learned in Iraq (they have learned something) which is that regime change by overwhelming force isn't working so well. So the goal in Iran, since it's also three times as large as Iraq, and it does have a large secular population and there's a lot of reason to believe that if we hadn't gone into Iraq, there would be a lot of dissent right now in Iran over the leadership; but nonetheless, I think their thinking is, that if we hit three or four dozen targets in the spring -- [sneezes] excuse me -- in the summer, late spring or summer, which I think is the tentative plan -- that would be roughly at the time Sharon is beginning his pullout of Gaza, and so their -- the theory is in the Pentagon there would be more good feelings towards America in the Muslim world once this begins. And if Iraq can be stabilized, which they think it will (I don’t know why, but they do.) after the elections, if that gets stabilized, then the goal is you hit three or four targets quickly and cleanly and you be sure you’re right and you have evidence to show that the Iranians are cheating more than they might -- than the world [inaudible] knows, this could lead to the secular population, those millions of young people, et cetera, who don't like the clerical leadership, to overthrowing or beginning to agitate against the mullahs once again. And the only problem with that thinking, of course, is that it's pretty much unique to those group of civilians in the Pentagon; because almost everybody else I talked to, in and out of the government, were scathing in their critique of this, saying it's absolutely hogwash, that what's going to happen, of course, is that the White House and the Pentagon is ignoring the nationalism that exists, the enormous feelings of togetherness inside Iran and love for country. And, essentially, the reason I think people talk to me -- because it's very clear with this group that's now in the White House and in the Pentagon, you can’t get to the meetings unless you drink the Kool-Aid. And so, if you don't agree with them, you can’t get in. And so, yeah, I think they really believe this is one way -- sort of on the cheap, without committing a lot of troops, an air raid, maybe some commandoes, you know, some guerrillas, American S.E.A.L.S or other teams go in with the Israelis, some of Israeli commando units go in to certain targets about which we’re not clear. But, basically, they think that's the ticket.</snip>
democracynow.org
Scary part is Seymour has a tendency to be right more times than he is wrong.
John |
