Written four years ago, and Hersh doesn’t even credit her as a source, and I sincerely doubt that she is the original source. What are her sources, besides an unknown number of anonymous people, and are they any different that Hersh’s?
Including this “source”, I’m still not enthralled. Not even a little bit.
what kind of job did the MSM do upon the Iran war startup? They went along, not asking “What does Iran – whether or not they have WMD – have to do with 9/11?” The MSM is doing what they always do: going along with what the PTB say. They are the mouth of the Establishment.
Not according to Hersh. He claims that was actually a cover story to draw attention away from the actual DNA source, a Pakistani doctor who was spying on bin Laden for CIA.
evil or incompetence?
The problem with Hersh’s story is that the most sensational claim in the story makes no sense. Let’s assume that ISI really did have bin Laden in its custody and control, and wanted to transfer him to the US on the conditions that bin Laden is killed, and that ISI’s imprisonment of him is kept secret. Having 80 American commandos fly into Pakistan and conduct a raid is just a really, really dumb way to achieve those goals, most especially the secrecy part.
I would also note that al Jazeera published the Abbottabad Report, the secret official investigation of the raid which concluded that:
The whole episode of the US assassination mission of May 2, 2011 and the Pakistan government’s response before, during and after appears in large part to be a story of complacency, ignorance, negligence, incompetence, irresponsibility and possibly worse at various levels inside and outside the government. (pp. 334-335)
I find this much more plausible than Hersh’s hyper-competent ISI.
I generally favor incompetence.
And if that’s the case the CIA concocted a cover story which set back the entire war on polio. Either way the means they used to nab Bin Laden will have serious consequences for the lives of innocent people for many years to come.
Upon reflection ,the really weird thing about Hersh’s version is that CIA would feel compelled to come up with a cover story for a guy who elsewhere in the piece sounds like an ISI asset, e.g.:
Bank was also told by the walk-in that bin Laden was very ill, and that early on in his confinement at Abbottabad, the ISI had ordered Amir Aziz, a doctor and a major in the Pakistani army, to move nearby to provide treatment.
and
Obama was anxious for reassurance that the US was going to get the right man. The proof was to come in the form of bin Laden’s DNA. The planners turned for help to Kayani and Pasha [the army chief of staff and head of ISI respectively], who asked Aziz to obtain the specimens.
As for polio, the Taliban was already looking for excuses to attack vaccination workers, with OPV causing sterility being a popular reason before 2011. We still should have avoided giving them one though, even if the CIA connection was never supposed to become public.
Exactly right.
Now if we could just have some evidence for the official story too, that might seem more plausible.
Now that I can get behind.
The best solution to all the questions posed by sceptics about the Abbottabad raid is contained in the book Osama’s Angel. Why the Pakistani doctor was hung out to dry by the CIA. Why a burial at sea was chosen to disguise the truth. Why the DNA identification was unreliable and lastly and most importantly, why did the US administration send men to fetch the man when a missile from a drone would have killed bin laden and done everything a burial at sea did, without risking American lives.
Why was no attempt made to capture the single most valuable source of information available?
Why was a helicopter filled with SEAL Team 6 soldiers shot down shortly after the raid and why is the usually most secretive American combat unit publicly squabbling over who shot bin Laden?
The story is much more convoluted than Seymour Hersh believes.
Which makes it even worse if anything - then, it wasn’t even that the method had some effect. It would mean that the war against Polio was set back who-knows-how-long because of a ruse…
ahem You do realise that book’s fiction, right?
I don’t understand the weirdness around an anonymous source. Anyone ever read the phrase “sources close to the Pentagon,” before? Am I the only one? “Anonymous” does not translate to “fabricated.” This is where the value of additional investigation comes in. It could be his source is bad, but that fucking happens. I just find it interesting that in 98% of the news stories no one cares if a source is anonymous, so long as it confirms something you already expect to know. Hello? Who’s there? Oh, hi! It’s our old friend, confirmation bias!
TL;DR Hersh may be wrong, but be consistent, either you accept that anonymous sources can be good a lot of the time, or you need to start rejecting more news stories as false.
ETA: Am I the only one who actually read the CJR article linked, and not just the BoingBoing summary? If you haven’t already, read it.
And that’s better how? They destroyed trust in the vaccinations without it even being a necessary part of the operation? Surely they could have come up with a story to cover the doc that didn’t involve screwing up the already poor public health system.
Oops, missed this…you said it first!
To me, it’s not that his sources are anonymous. It’s that his story is improbable. It has a conspiracy that seems too large to maintain, and it has various people lying in ways that they really didn’t have to.
It works if you believe that the government is always evil and that they’ll always compulsively lie, but even while being skeptical of government action, this story seems too far-fetched.
Until proven correct
Out of interest, are/were there any news sources you thought were better?
I reiterate: Read the article. We’re not talking government complicity in killing thousands of Americans a la the 9-11 conspiracy theories. We’re talking about cooperation and complicity among people who killed Bin Laden. That kind of complicity is possible. The government does successfully keep secrets from us, and other governments, on a pretty regular basis. A significant proportion of Americans wouldn’t give a shit how Bin Laden was killed, just so long as he was. The kind of complicity needed is easy to find on the American side, harder on the ISI side. Nevermind that he has a fucking source, anonymous or not. Conspiracy theorists usually can’t even get that level of confirmation. 9-11 Truthers would kill for an anonymous source.
ETA: Relevant quote from Hersh himself,
Hersh: Let me say something to you. There was a practice at the New Yorker that continued at the London Review of Books. The reason I like the LRB is that it isn’t tied down to Americana. It is more open to being … In Europe people think this story makes sense. There is not the quibbling. It is a different approach. By that I mean that the view of America is less cheery abroad but the standards are the same. The people at the London Review knew whom I talked to. It is the same at the New Yorker. David Remnick knows who I talk to. I do have sources, which is a problem for a lot of people that don’t. (Link.)
