doesn't get much further in the gutter than this:

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-n...ed-Benazir

http://libertarianrepublican.blogspot.co...-left.html

Quote:Lew Rockwell posted the following on March 11 at LRC:


The great Seymour Hersh drops a bombshell about the murdering veep; note also his remarks about CIA actions against domestic "enemies of the state." (Thanks to Kev Hall)

also the nut that runs anti-war.com and liberalvalues have been pushing this related story.


http://spectator.org/blog/2009/05/18/her...-of-orderi

Seymore Hersh, Lew Rockwell = Scumbags

Obama will make the apologies.

Quote:A number of websites around the world are suspecting the same unit for killing of Benazir Bhutto

Ok, so a half dozen nuts get together and agree, so that makes it true?

I expect gutter stuff from Rockwell, he isn't published anywhere widespread, just a grassroots cancer for the GOP/conservatives and aide for the Left, being an Anarchist and what not.

As for Hersh, while I've long thought he was an idiot and very Dishonest, if he's going to accuse the Vice President of having one of the United States close allies, MURDERED, then he better prove it beyond doubt or cease to be printed in any mainstream press again, period. Last straw

and right as I post this, Hersh runs out to deny he said this:

Quote:http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2009_pg7_4

UPDATE: Seymour Hersh is denying he made this accusation:

LAHORE: US journalist Seymour Hersh on Monday contradicted news reports being published in South Asia that quote him as saying a “special death squad” made by former US vice president Dick Cheney had killed Benazir Bhutto. The award-winning journalist described as “complete madness” the reports that the squad headed by General Stanley McChrystal – the new commander of US army in Afghanistan – had also killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafique Al Hariri and a Lebanese army chief. “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.” He said Gen McChrystal had run a special forces unit that engaged in “high value target activity”, but “while I have been critical of some of that unit’s activities in the pages of the New Yorker and in interviews, I have never suggested that he was involved in political assassinations or death squads on behalf of Mr Cheney, as the published stories state.” He regretted that none of the publications had contacted him before carrying the report. “This is another example of blogs going bonkers with misleading and fabricated stories and professional journalists repeating such rumours without doing their job – and that is to verify such rumours.” staff report.

Keith Olbermann ran a story related to this in March though, which is what this derives from and Hersh claimed Cheney was running a "covert executive assassination ring."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132236.html

Radical Muslims do not need any proof.

(05-19-2009 09:08 AM)SumOfAllFears Wrote:  Radical Muslims do not need any proof.

Or the left.

after watching the Olbermann clip, from which apparently "Libertarians" such as Lew Rockwell and anti-war.com take as "Troof", Hersh has really stepped into something.

completely contradicts himself, now that he is called on it and his career is on the line.


but yeah, America's enemies, Hersh included....don't need no stinking proof

I share some concerns about Hersh, but he seems like a pretty serious guy who doesn't just make stuff up.

By "executive assassination ring" I think what he means is a special operations group that is run by the officials high in the executive branch (VP Cheney) without oversight and bypassing much of the chain of command. Olberman seems to interpret this as a group put in place to assassinate foreign heads of state. More likely, if it exists, then its purpose is to assassinate terrorist leaders. In essence it would appear to be the boots on the ground equivalent to the Predator drones over Yemen, Pakistan, etc.

It is interesting that kooks like Justin Raimando (antiwar) urged that the US go in and assassinate Sadaam Hussein, in spite of executive orders that prohibited precisely that. (I don't know if Raimando did, but his fellow kooks most definitely did).

I really doubt that Hersh would have linked this group to Bhutto's assassination. But, in that part of the world, conspiracy theories run wild pretty quickly, so I don't think anyone paused to question whether it made sense.

.

Well I guess we have got to have SOMETHING to take the spot light off the Pelosi debacle.

And any old assassination conspiracy theory will do I guess .....

.

Hersh has long had a loose association with the Truth

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/


The left made assassinating Heads of State illegal during the Church Commissions if I'm not mistaken? If not for that, I imagine Saddam would've been whacked during the 90's, Chavez would be dead also. JFK tried several times before they made a deal with the Soviets, to take out Castro...using some very James Bond like methods(which failed)

Bhutto, a pro-American ally, to be killed because she was supposedly going to claim Bin Laden was dead and we were covering it up to keep operations going in Afghanistan, is a different matter.

I despise Chavez, but the Venezuelans have created their own fate, and I think it would be a mistake to presume to rescue them from it. Saddam is the poster child for political assassination, though.

I think the Olberman article implied the Executive Order came from Gerald Ford.

Interesting comment re: Hersh (it's come up in conversations stemming from this board):

Quote:But his next book, 1991’s The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, relied heavily on a source whom Hersh later characterized in an interview as a liar.

GG9er - that's a pretty good article. It validates my impression of the guy - (1) I think his published accounts are pretty well documented, (2) the conclusions he makes from them are generally highly suspect, and (3) the guy is a prick. His actions in front of the ACLU are pretty Machiavellian - make wild, barely substantiated statements to a large group of motivated people that are well trained in research who can then go out and flush out a ton of information sources for you. That said, I still tend to doubt that he would say that the US assassinated Bhutto.

I have read the Samson Option and I can only say that there are a number of things in there that I have pretty direct knowledge about, from what were highly classified sources at the time. Those things that I know enough to know whether they are true are false are all true. There are a lot of other things in there about which I don't have close-to-the-pulse knowledge. Obvioulsy, I can't vouch one way or the other on theose.

All I can say is that the things I know something about are all true. And I find that to be a pretty rare occurrence in reading books of this genre that deal with subjects about which I have first-hand (or nearly so) information.

Interesting. I'd be more interested in who/what Hersh was referring to.

How would you rate Hersh in terms of the conclusions and/or narrative that he draws? I'd assume you have some exposure to him outside of that book.

edit: I assume the reference is about Nicholas Davies:

wikipedia Wrote:Mordechai Vanunu and Robert Maxwell

In his 1991 book The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Hersh wrote that Nicholas Davies, the foreign editor of The Daily Mirror, had tipped off the Israeli embassy in London about whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu. Vanunu had given information about Israel's nuclear weapons program first to the The Sunday Times and later to the Sunday Mirror. At the time, the Sunday Mirror and its sibling newspaper, the Daily Mirror were owned by media magnate Robert Maxwell who was alleged to have had contacts with Israel's intelligence services. According to Hersh, Davies had also worked for the Mossad. Vanunu was later lured by Mossad from London to Rome, kidnapped, returned to Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in jail. Davies and Maxwell published an anti-Vanunu story that was claimed to be part of a disinformation campaign on behalf of the Israeli government.[6]

Hersh repeated the allegations during a press conference held in London to publicize his book. No British newspaper would publish the allegations because of Maxwell's famed litigiousness. However, two British MPs raised the matter in the House of Commons, which meant that British newspapers were able to report what had been said without fear of being sued for libel. Maxwell called the claims "ludicrous, a total invention," although perhaps coincidentally, he sacked Nick Davies shortly thereafter.[7]