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Seymour Hersh: U.S. Military ‘Murderous’
One day after Sen. John Kerry "botched a joke" and insulted the U.S. military, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist has said something even worse.
Seymour Hersh, an author and regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, took to the microphone Wednesday at a Canadian university to bash the Bush administration and the U.S. military in terms that would make even Kerry wince.
"There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq,” Hersh told an audience at McGill University in Montreal.
Hersh based his comments on the claim that he has seen video footage of atrocities by U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq.
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The McGill Daily reports that Hersh described video footage depicting alleged U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but said he has not yet reported on. Hersh recalled one video in which he said American soldiers massacred a group of people playing soccer. "Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids," he began. "Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.
"Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. "[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.
"About 10 minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” Hersh said.
Hersh did not say where he got the videos, but it is well known that the terrorist insurgents in Iraq have been peddling carefully staged videos to gullible American journalists purporting to show atrocities by U.S. forces as part of al-Qaida's propaganda campaign.
Hersh said if Americans knew the full extent of alleged U.S. "criminal conduct" in Iraq, the returning Iraq war veterans would be treated as Vietnam veterans were shamefully treated back home more than 30 years ago.
"In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation," Hersh said. "It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."
In an attack on President George W. Bush, his family and the president's past struggles with alcoholism, Hersh told the audience he doesn't understand why the United States is fighting in Iraq. "In Washington, you can’t expect any rationality. I don’t know if he’s in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn’t do it, or because it’s the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program.” Hersh predicted that the U.S. will initiate an attack against Iran, and that the situation in Iraq will deteriorate further.
"There’s no reason to see a change in policy about Iraq. [Bush] thinks that, in 20 years, he’s going to be recognized for the leader he was – the analogy he uses is Churchill,” Hersh said. "If you read the public statements of the leadership, they’re so confident and so calm . . . It’s pretty scary.” Hersh said that despite what he considers consistently bad news coming out of Iraq, he does have reason for hope. "The bad news is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America,” Hersh said. "When we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day.”
Editor's note:
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