Seymour Hersh's forecast

Welcome to the world of investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, whose remarkable career has been bookended by two of the most shameful events in America's military history: My Lai in Vietnam, a story he broke as a free-lance reporter, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, a story he broke for The New Yorker.

During his 38-year career, Hersh has written eight books, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Pulitzer and a host of other prizes. His sources serve at the highest levels of many governments, including our own.

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Hersh's message is simple and frightening: "(George W.) Bush is an ideologue, a Utopian," Hersh said. "He wants to clean out the Middle East and install democracy. He doesn't care how many body bags come back home. There's nothing more dangerous than an ideologue who is completely bonkers and no one is going to tell him."

President Bush is committed to perpetual war, Hersh said.

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Hersh has talked privately with many in the military and CIA, including some who have recently resigned. All told him that if the Iraq war had gone "right" - say, if the Americans had been greeted as liberators - our military would have marched "right and left" - to Syria and Iran.

"Inside, if you agreed that the road to ending international terrorism ended in Baghdad, you were a hero," Hersh said. "You were promoted. Bush didn't have to ask for information to be slanted his way. If you wanted promotions, or to sit in on the conferences with the big boys, you told him what he wanted to hear. If you disagreed, then your career stalled. Totally wacky."

This sorry state of affairs continues today. President Bush is told only what he wants to hear, and since he doesn't read newspapers, he has become completely divorced from reality.

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We cannot win in Iraq, Hersh said. "We have no intel. We can't find the insurgents. When they bomb something, we only know about it afterward. We can't figure them out. Someone said, 'We play chess, they play Go.' All we can do is lose. All we can do is bomb."

The United States cannot afford this endless war, Hersh said. The dollar is already falling against the Euro, and the Chinese and Japanese hold trillions of dollars of U.S. debt.

"Soon China and Russia will start buying oil in Euros," Hersh said. "They'll stop buying American in Europe because they hate us so much - Disney in Paris is already going down. Large American corporations doing business abroad are going down. We could see more anti-American violence abroad. The dollar will fall. Billionaires are now telling other billionaires to get out of the stock market and buy foreign currency and stocks."

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"We have put ourselves in an enormous hole," he said. "There's no magic story to get us out. The market will crash. Maybe people will come to their senses. Maybe some Democrat will step forward to do the right thing. And maybe the Easter bunny will turn out to be real."

  American Reporter article