Hersh criticizes Bush policy on Iraq war

In a speech rife with indignation, wit and scathing criticism of the Bush administration, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Seymour Hersh spoke to an audience that filled McCosh 50 about his experiences reporting in Iraq and Vietnam.

Hersh, a reporter for The New Yorker and author of "Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," focused on his most famous reporting, including the mistreatment of Abu Ghraib prisoners, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and his most recent New Yorker article on the air war in Iraq.

Throughout the speech, Hersh noted Bush's commitment to "stay the course" in Iraq, and argued that such a mentality portends a bleak future for Iraqis.

"It's about democracy ... I'll buy [Bush's] story that he means business. And if that doesn't scare you, then nothing else I say will," Hersh said. "If I were an Iraqi, I'd start thinking about Tuscany."

Hersh asserted that such a blunt approach to sticking with Iraq will only lead to more deaths. "If we get out, 30,000 will be killed. If we stay, 60,000 will be, or 90,000," he said. "I think we're down to that type of negative thinking."

Instead of standing up to Bush, Hersh argued, the "feckless" Senate has backed down and refused to confront the president.

"It's a great debate whether the U.S. Senate is supine or prone, but it's down," he said, drawing laughs from the audience.

Hersh's article in this week's New Yorker, titled "Annals of National Security: Up in the Air," describes how the current violence in Iraq will shift toward a reliance on air combat because Iraqi troops are not well-enough trained to operate without it.

In reference to America's proclaimed success in Fallujah, Hersh said, "We basically bombed the city to smithereens, and then said that we had sanitized it."

After acknowledging that Saddam Hussein certainly killed innocent civilians, he dismissed that as a rationale for casualties caused by Americans.

"I prefer to have Saddam doing the killing than America doing the killing, but that's just my view," Hersh said. Hersh also asserted that Bush had planned to go into Iraq as early as March 2002.

Hersh argued that the abuses at Abu Ghraib stemmed from the military's inability to understand communications intercepted from insurgents. The guards at Abu Ghraib had been converted from "traffic cop duty" to prison guards, according to Hersh. He portrayed them as ordinary citizens from West Virginia who had, for the most part, joined the military to pick up some extra cash.

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Hersh's breakthrough as an investigative journalist came when he uncovered and reported the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which American troops slaughtered 500 to 550 innocent civilians. He drew parallels between the tragedy and the incidents at Abu Ghraib, showing how war can change people for the worst.

In a chilling recollection, he told the audience that the mother of one of the soldiers at My Lai told him, "I gave them a good boy, and they gave me back a murderer."