Seymour Hersh on How The War Is Going to Be Fought
Listening to: BBC Radio 1
Seymour Hersh has a wide ranging article in
the New Yorker about where the Iraq War is headed:
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s
public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American
airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically
the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military
experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease
as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi
fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.
Chillingly:
“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,”
the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a
believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’
” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to
Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious
idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s
public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences,
most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was
also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public
forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former
official said, “but Bush has no idea.”
For a couple of interviews about the article and the topics it discusses:
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