[Media-watch] Sy Hersh spills secrets of Iraq and war on terror - Berkeley.edu - 11 October 2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

Long feature, full content is available at URL without registration, also at 
the URL is a link to a 1 hour 22 minute webcast of the event.

JA

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 Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh spills the secrets of the Iraq 
quagmire and the war on terror

By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 11 October 2004



BERKELEY - The Iraq war is not winnable, a secret U.S. military unit has 
been "disappearing" people since December 2001, and America has no idea how 
irreparably its torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has damaged its image 
in the Middle East. These were just a few of the grim pronouncements made by 
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour "Sy" Hersh to KQED 
host Michael Krasny before a Berkeley audience on Friday night (Oct. 8).

The past two years will "go down as one of the classic sort of failures" in 
history, said the man who has been called the "greatest muckraker of all 
time" and (paradoxically) the "enfant terrible of journalism for more than 
30 years." While Hersh blamed the White House and the Pentagon for the Iraq 
quagmire and America's besmirched world image, he was stymied by how it all 
happened. "How could eight or nine neoconservatives come and take charge of 
this government?" he asked. "They overran the bureaucracy, they overran the 
Congress, they overran the press, and they overran the military! So you say 
to yourself, How fragile is this democracy?" ... cut.. full text at URL