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May 20, 2009

Hersh gets Hershed

By Ralph Alter

"Seymour Hersh "is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist."  Richard Perle 
Seymour Hersh, perhaps the only person serving in a journalistic capacity to suggest that Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright were over-zealous in their defense of U.S. interests,  has gotten himself stuck with his considerable foot in his considerable mouth by the Nation newspaper out of Pakistan.   In a report from Philip Klein at The American Spectator, Mr. Hersh quotes the Nation:

"Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on the orders of the special death squad formed by former US vice-president Dick Cheney, which had already killed the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and the army chief of that country." 

Now butter wouldn't melt in the mouth of the Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times journalist as he denies the quote and blames it on those crazy bloggers.  The Daily Times, an internationally respected Pakistani newspaper, reports Hersh's denial:

"Vice president Cheney does not have a death squad. I have no idea who killed Mr Hariri or Mrs Bhutto," Hersh said. "I have never said that I did have such information. I most certainly did not say anything remotely to that effect during an interview with an Arab media outlet....


This is another example of blogs going bonkers with misleading and fabricated stories and professional journalists repeating such rumours without doing their job. 

But as recently as March 11, Hersh was reported by the MinnPost describing an executive assassination ring purportedly directed by Dick Cheney:

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.  

At http://www.minnpost.com/  a full recording of Hersh's remarks at the "Great Conversations" event held March 10th at the University of Minnesota is available for confirmation.  It isn't a stretch to believe that Hersh made the Bhutto/Hariri statement after the earlier remarks at the University of Minnesota caught on tape.  Perhaps Hersh, the loudest horn tooting the Abu Ghraib theme song, forgot that the sound of the drums in the global village carry far and fast.

 For too long Seymour Hersh has employed his journalistic skills to inflame the like-minded paranoiacs of the American left.  Statements of this nature made to an Arabic newspaper can only be meant to inflame Islamic opinion against the United States.  It's time Seymour Hersh was brought to account for his treacherous statements.

Ralph Alter blogs at Right on Target 
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