Seymour's thoughts

Al Jazeera English - News - Interview: Seymour Hersh

You get a good idea of Seymour Hersh's liberal credentials in this interview in Al Jazeera.

He wrote a recent New Yorker article about the Israeli attack on a Syrian mystery facility last year. Here's the key paragraph as to what he thinks was attacked:

A senior Syrian official confirmed that a group of North Koreans had been at work at the site, but he denied that the structure was related to chemical warfare. Syria had concluded, he said, that chemical warfare had little deterrent value against Israel, given its nuclear capability. The facility that was attacked, the official said, was to be one of a string of missile-manufacturing plants scattered throughout Syria—“all low tech. Not strategic.” (North Korea has been a major exporter of missile technology and expertise to Syria for decades.) He added, “We’ve gone asymmetrical, and have been improving our capability to build low-tech missiles that will enable us to inflict as much damage as possible without confronting the Israeli Army. We now can hit all of Israel, and not just the north.”

Whatever was under construction, with North Korean help, it apparently had little to do with agriculture—or with nuclear reactors—but much to do with Syria’s defense posture, and its military relationship with North Korea. And that, perhaps, was enough to silence the Syrian government after the September 6th bombing.

In the Al Jazeera interview he explains:

I was told two different things by various people inside Syria.

One said it was perhaps a chemical facility for chemical warfare, another one said more persuasively to me that "no, it was for missiles - short range missiles to be used in case we're attacked by Israel, we'd respond asymmetrically with missiles."

So Seymour seems to agree with the common sense proposition that there is strong reason to doubt that Syria is telling the whole truth. Yet who does he appear to direct most of his criticism to? Israel:

....if this article I did generates a decision by Israel to go public with its overwhelming dossier that will answer any questions well that's great ... but they have not and [I find awful] the hubris, the arrogance of thinking that you could go commit an act of war by any definition and then say nothing about it.

Syria of course compounded the problem by being hapless and feckless in response.

So, Syria's avoidance of the issue is mere "fecklessness"; Israel not disclosing its evidence is "hubris and arrogance".

And Seymour likes to get his anti-Bush credentials out there too:

Q: What do you think of Bush's legacy to the world?

He's done more to terrify the world than anybody I know. The world is so much more dangerous.

Worthy of Daily Kos commentary, that is.

He even brings this up:

[On Israel] it's very hard, you know in America there's just no questioning. The American Jewish influence is enormous. There's a lot of money.

Does "Jewish money" affect what you write in the New Yorker, Seymour?

He also has a very rosy, and pretty amazing view, of the potential for goodwill towards Israel in the Middle East:

I'm Jewish and I'm not anti-Semitic and I'm not anti-Israel - [Israelis] understand that, just as by the way a lot of Americans don't understand that many of the leadership of Hamas and others.

Not everyone spends their life there wanting to kill Jews, they're more willing than people would like to believe to co-exist, they just don't like the system the way it works now.

How very encouraging (sarcasm).