I found the most recent Seymour Hersh article in the London Review of Books fascinating for a variety of reasons. It certainly raises more questions than it answers.
It’s a long article alleging that the Turks are trying to deliberately provoke a war with Syria, and may have been aided and abetted by an Administration eager to cook the books on intel regarding Sarin gas to justify a far wider air and ground war against the Assad regime than was previously publicly proposed. Additionally, it alleges a ‘rat trail’ of guns being run through shadow companies run by the CIA and Turkish Intelligence agency (the MIT) with former director David Petreaus playing the Ollie North role and a “gold for oil” program where the Obama administration created a loopholes that allows Turkey to skirt Iranian sanctions and make a huge profit for Edrogan associates.
A lot of this seems salacious, and Hersh’s regular publisher The New Yorker refused to publish it, The Washington Post nearly did but felt the sourcing wasn’t solid, so it landed into obscurity at the London Review of Books.
Hersh has a mixed record of revealing hidden truths. He helped reveal the awful truth of the My Lai massacre to a skeptical American public, was one of the first journalists to report on the bogus WMD claims of the Bush administration, one of the first to cover Abu Gharib, and while his Lebanon War articles were somewhat sloppy he did reveal that the Bush administration gave the green light to the air campaign, which was in place long before Gilad Shalit got kidnapped. His article alleging that Cheney pushed a first strike against Iran was proven to be unfounded, and it is unclear how well he is sourcing this article.
Still it raises many interesting questions. If even portions of this article are true, it reveals a criminality that may not be native to any administration but may be endemic to the national security establishment. On the other hand, it also shows generals and intelligence analysts eager not to cave in to political pressure as they did in 2003 and avoid costly quagmires. Gen. Dempsey comes out of this looking particularly good, Gen. Petraeus is further discredited, Barack Obama looks hapless and manipulated by supporting players like his Chief of Staff Dennis McDonnough and Secretary of State Kerry, while our entire Middle Eastern policy is seriously discredited. It also is disturbing to read passages outlining that Obama wanted to expand the air war to include infrastructure targets and B-52 bunker busting bombing runs, indicating a war that would have been far more expansive for regime change purposes than the limited one he publicly favored to interdict chemical capabilities. The ‘rat trail’, if proved existent, would frankly be worse than the crimes of Iran-Contra.
The aspects with the Edrogan regime are also quite appalling, particularly since it seems likely they actually are skirting sanctions against Iran with American complicity and were trying to provoke a wider war.
Interested in other bloggers takes on this, my gut tells me that the allegations about Turkey could be true, the others seem more far fetched to me.
kirth says
I could not find such proof. Can you link to it? Did Hersh print a retraction? The claim seems entirely within Cheney’s character; he has advocated war on Iran in public several times since leaving office. Here’s one example. If your “proof” consists of other Bush Administration figures saying he didn’t do it, I won’t accept that as proof. They’re a famous pack of liars, after all.
Hersh has a long record of writing stories that nobody wanted to believe, which proved to be true. For whatever reason, people in the intelligence industry tell him things they won’t tell other reporters, and he seems to be good at discerning what’s true. That the New Yorker and Washington Post declined to publish the article is not very persuasive evidence.
gmoke says
I wonder whether she has something to add to this stew:
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/04/02/the-eyeopener-report-sibel-edmonds-examines-the-turkish-false-flag-leak/
JimC says
Why does Turkey want a war?
theloquaciousliberal says
Though I’m by no means an expert, it seems to me that religious differences explain the Syrian civil war (and Turkey’s interest) most easily. Money, power, and national security issues are also, as always, in play.
But, most simply, Assad’s government is Shia Muslim while the rebels are mostly Sunni. Turkey’s government is primarily Sunni and, not surprisingly (?), sides with the rebels.
howlandlewnatick says
The war machine still wants to be fed its ration of blood. Could it be that Turkey, desperate to join the EU, has been promised a quid pro quo? A NATO country, Turkey, warring with Syria, could call on NATO for help. Viola!, the world at war.
Mark L. Bail says
to flirt with war to take attention off his faltering administration, but I can’t see him provoking a war with them. His opposition, Gulen, is also sort of weird. Gulen supported Erdogan in the beginning, but Gulen’s supporters in the police and courts have been investigating Erdogan’s people, some of whom are dirty. And of course, Gulen lives in Pennsylvania and has been opening charter schools across the county.
Turkey is also legitimately concerned about refugees.
Sy Hersh is sketchy.
JimC says
… is one of our four or five greatest journalists. If he’s ever erred, it’s because he deals in the murky waters of international intelligence. His sources can’t always be trusted, even if they’re telling the truth. Things change.
jconway says
I was simply pointing out that Hersh has not always been right. Obviously Commentary isn’t the best link to link to, but I do think the author does a good job showing how Hersh kept changing his tune on how imminent a war with Iran was and contradicted himself. He also made some incorrect statements on Lebanon.
Obviously he did great reporting on My Lai, great reporting on WMD, Abu Gharib, and got parts of his Lebanon analysis correct. I am not saying he is wrong (and I removed wild from my title since it gives the wrong impression-these are outrageous and could very well be true), I am saying his track record is imperfect enough that I doubt all of these allegations are true, but his track record is also good enough that part of this article has to be true, and that by itself is fairly disconcerting.
theloquaciousliberal says
This seems silly to me.
According to Hersch, “The rat line, authorized in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition.”
So, if proven, we have a case of the Obama Administration (primarily through the CIA, we’re told) directing a covert operation to funnel weapons to the Syrian rebels. The same rebels that Congress supports.
Iran-Contra, by contrast, involved much greater separation of powers issues.
The Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran in direct violation of our national interest and of the official trade embargo. They then funneled the proceeds of those sales to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Congress, with the Boland Amendment, had explicitly and clearly prohibited the Administration from further funding of the Contras.
I honestly don’t see how you could possibly see the “rat line” as at all worse than Iran-Contra.
jconway says
Congress has not actually authorized these weapon sales and it overwhelmingly voted against direct military intervention in that conflict and military aid, only approving non-lethal aid. So that is a big seperation of powers issue. It also didn’t authorize the confiscation of weapons from Libya to be funneled through Turkish third parties (the same funneling gold to Iran?) and given to a known Al Qaeda front.
This would be especially damning since our domestic and international opponents of our Libyan intervention could argue we wanted the stockpiles for ourselves, it also doesn’t help that weapons that should be used to stabilize Libya (Benghazi!) are being funneled to destabilize Syria. That weapons we are trying to protect from Al Qaeda are being handed to Al Qaeda and may involve giving gold to Iran-another state sponsor of terror and the main supplier of the group we are opposing in Syria. Such a web would be full of illegality, unconstitutionality, instability, and most importantly immorality. I for one would be unable to continue to support the President if this is confirmed.
SomervilleTom says
The administration of Ronald Reagan sold MISSILES to the IRANIAN government! The same Iranian government that had only a few years earlier stormed the US embassy and held US citizens hostage for months. The same Iran that was at the TOP of the US list of “Terrorist nations”.
Surely you see the difference between selling missiles to Iran and allowing weapons sales that “Congress has not actually authorized”. I don’t remember Turkey storming any embassies, nor do I remember Turkey sponsoring terrorist activity in recent decades.
jconway says
But we shouldn’t be giving the President a pass on that simply because he is part of the blue team. I don’t want to be arming Al Qaeda, nor do I want to be helping the Turks, who are helping the Iranians and may have deployed chemical weapons as a false flag operation. If any of that is true its a pretty dreadfully dark corner that Obama has gotten himself into.
SomervilleTom says
One of the problems we created by our glacially slow response to the unfolding events in Syria is that by the time we realized that the US needed to play a role, the moderate players were already pushed out of the picture by the extremists in Syria.
There are no opposition groups to the Syrian regime that are not also “known Al Qaeda front” organizations. That’s what happens when civilized nations sit by and watch tyrants abuse, torture, and kill their political opponents. In the face of those kinds of assaults, there is no room for “moderate” players.
The sad truth is that America, and the western world, sat by for generations while tyrants throughout the Middle East enriched themselves and oppressed their people, while funneling cheap petroleum to “friendly” hands. The result is that two entities top the list of “enemies” hated by overwhelming majority of the indigenous population of the Middle East: Israel and America.
It will take generations to undo the damage we have wrought and change that perception.
jconway says
I disagree with aspects of your post above*, but this conclusion is entirely correct.
*not sure if intervening earlier would’ve prevented the extremists, we backed a moderate front against Qadaffi and it seems to be floundering against extremists there.
One could go back to the coup in Iran and argue, if we had allowed secular socialists more room to get elected it might’ve defeated both Baathism and Islamism as alternative ideologies. We have handled Egypt incredibly poorly for decades.
llp33 says
although I think his long record of critical investigative journalism on unpopular subjects has earned him far better than a “mixed record”. Your list of his greatest hits alone is an achievement more than most journalists will make, and he’s rightly won the Pulitzer & George Polk Awards for it.
From the HuffPo last December:
“Hersh didn’t seem particularly bothered by having to shop the story to different outlets, telling HuffPost over email that “these things happen on tough stories presented by a non-staff writer … the way it goes … freelancing is not for the faint of heart.”
He’s been freelancing with the London Review of Books about Syria since last year. The LRB stands by his work. For his work last Dec., they “said the piece was not only edited, but thoroughly fact checked by a former New Yorker fact checker who had worked with Hersh in the past.”
The critics of his piece? “Government officials”, which might as well be an endorsement of Hersh.
The rest is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/seymour-hersh-syria-report_n_4409674.html