I think its important to understand how a long term journalist operates. We have to remember Hersh has been at it for a long time and his first big scoop was Mei Lei. Since then, Hersh has developed a large number of friendly sources in the departments of State, defense, and other relevant parts of the Federal Government. And anytime some big policy move occurs, it will be noticed by one of Hersh's sources. For example, when the CIA started greatly expanding the number of personnel devoted to just Iranian matters, that will be duly noted by employees and some will inform Hersh. Knowing exactly what these CIA employees are being assigned to do may be less clear. In the case of the thread topic, a meeting to discuss ways to create a false flag against Iran, I tend to believe such a meeting took place, none of Hersh's sources were directly in the meeting, but they heard about it in the general inter office gossip. And journalistic rules require just multi independent source conformation of the reports.
In the case of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, that according to Hersh was a pre planned Cheney brainfart. What Hersh was pointing out was that it was a dry run for a later invasion of Iran based on the belief that the general population of Lebanon would support Israel as they liberated them from Hezbollah terrorists. And in the same way the Iranian youth would welcome being liberated from the rule of Iranian mullahs. As we all know, that thinking was proved wrong in Lebanon, Hezbollah support inside of Lebanon almost tripled, but another piece of Cheney type stinking thinking got discredited.
A while back, Common Courtesy basically proposed the hypothesis that Hersh's blowing the whistle effectively stopped the plans, and I basically think its far more complex than that. I think Hersh is 100% correct in his reporting that Cheney is doing all he can to drum up a war with Iran while whispering in the ear of GWB, that he will be a failed President if he does not launch a major attack on Iran by the end of his term. And what stops Cheney more than anything else is simply the reality that a bungled occupation of Iraq has made any attack of Iran almost 100% unrealistic.
And because GWB&co has some 170 days left, we will continue to have elements of our own Federal Government becoming increasing desperate to brew up a war with Iran. Here we bitterly complain elements of the Pakistani ISI may be aiding the Taliban, how horrible, yet when we have elements in our own Federal Government basically trying to brew up more wars, we try to kill the messenger in Hersh.
Hersh only gets snippets of information here and there and has to use partly guess work to piece things together, but on balance, he has done a pretty excellent job reporting on what Cheney abd our neocons are up to. Hersh is exactly why our founding fathers respected and encouraged the power of a free press.
And with patriots like Dick Cheney, we sure do not need any enemies, because his little actions have already got our country into enough problems already.
In my mind, people like Cheney and Rumsfeld have a direct role in causing 911, they always see the short term benefits of their little manipulations that get hundreds of thousands of other people killed, but they almost always come back to bite the American people.
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