Hitchens: What Went Wrong - The flaw in Seymour Hersh's theory

[Barrett808]

What Went Wrong
The flaw in Seymour Hersh's theory.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, May 18, 2004, at 9:52 AM PT

The most surprising thing about Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker essay on the Abu Ghraib depravities is surely its title. It is headed "The Gray Zone." Can that be right? It seems to be generally assumed that the work of the sniggering video-morons is black and white: one of the very few moral absolutes of which we have a firm and decided grasp.

But Hersh's article wants to argue that the fish rots from the head, as indeed it very often does (even though, metaphorically speaking, one might think that the fish's guts would be the first to decay). And in order to argue this top-down process, he decides to propose that it began with Sept. 11. "In a sense," as he himself cautiously phrases it, this could arguably be true. As he reports:

Almost from the start, the Administration's search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major command-and-control problems. For example, combat forces that had Al Qaeda forces in sight had to obtain legal clearance before firing on them. On October 7th,the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Muhammed Omar, the Taliban leader. A lawyer on duty at the United States Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, refused to authorize a strike. By the time an attack was approved, the target was out of reach.

Hersh has reported this tale before, along with the furious reaction that Donald Rumsfeld displayed when he heard the news. And, as he further reminds us, the Washington Post "reported that, as many as ten times since early October <2001>, Air Force pilots believed they'd had senior Al Qaeda and Taliban members in their sights but had been unable to act in time because of legalistic hurdles."

(more)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2100717/

[lancdem]

1. I'm waiting for Christopher Hitchens

to admit he's embarrassed to be a Bush supporter, given his supposed left-wing credentials. But I'm not holding my breath.

[kaitykaity]

2. So the sliming of Hersh begins.

Hitchens is a hack.

[lancdem]

3. A RW hack

[roguevalley]

4. he's a douche bag. a drunken douche bag.

[xchrom]

5. the dimmest of intellectual lights

tries to do the impossible -- understand someone who is actually smart and complex.
and trust me i'm no big hersh fan -- but the guy is amazing when he breaks something down.

[geek tragedy]

6. Wow, did he address

the main issue at all? Nothing about command responsibility? Nothing to explain how Jethro and Ellie Mae became acquainted with sophisticated psychological profiles of Arab men?

Get him a cheerleading outfit.

[newyawker99]

12. Hi geek tragedy!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Miss Authoritiva]

7. So just what is the flaw in Hersh's theory?

Sorry, my arteries must be hardening at a rate faster than I expected. I've reread this piece several times and I still haven't grasped what "the flaw" is.

Somebody? Anybody? Bueller?

[Jim__]

11. Good question

Reading back through the article, I came upon 2 possibilities - he didn't like the title:

The most surprising thing about Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker essay on the Abu Ghraib depravities is surely its title. It is headed "The Gray Zone." Can that be right? It seems to be generally assumed that the work of the sniggering video-morons is black and white: one of the very few moral absolutes of which we have a firm and decided grasp.

And, the 2nd possibility, the article contained More than one kind of non sequitur:

More than one kind of non sequitur is involved in this "scenario." And very obviously, the conclusion can exist quite apart from the premises. (There would have been sadistic dolts in the American occupation forces in Iraq, even if there had not been wavering lawyerly fools in the Tampa center that was monitoring Afghanistan.) One needs to stipulate, once again, that the filthy images from Abu Ghraib are not bad because they look bad, but bad because they are bad. Yet is it as obvious as it seems that only the supporters of the war have any questions to answer here?

A somewhat fascinating claim all on its own. I will concede to any logicians on this point, but, I'm only aware of one kind of non sequitur, namely, reaching a conclusion that doesn't follow from the premises. But, then, Hitchens does seem to follow his own unique brand of "logic", and in his logic, there may be multiple kinds of non sequiturs. .

Reading the article, I take his main point to be that "the left" criticizes Bush for not having captured Osama; and the type of activities going on at Abu Ghraib might be required to capture Osama; therefore, it is the left's fault that these activities are taking place. If that is his point, it seems like Hitchens has stumbled into his own non sequitur. He fails to explain how torturing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib could possibly lead to the capture of Osama.

[thebigidea]

13. geez, does he even know WHY the piece is titled "The Gray Zone"?

Cute seeing Snitchy whining about morals.

As he told Robert Scheer recently after being handed his own ass: "Pathetic. Pathetic."

[KoKo]

8. So, the drunken bum, hack writer whoring for the RW speaks out against

Hersh. Does anyone even listen to him anymore? He's good for a laugh at what he could have been if he'd stayed after the "Kissinger types" instead of whore for the RW money to support his little "habit."

:puke: on Hitch the Hack!

[struggle4progress]

9. Did he even read Hersh's article?

:shrug:

[Manix]

10. He needs to go back into detox, as he is still having hallucinations.

[glitch]

14. Don't underestimate the effects of severe alcohol abuse -

the brain damage is not reversible.

[Bridget Burke]

15. And Hitchens once had a brain....

So many of the right-wing hacks are totally talentless.

He had talent. Too bad.

[teryang]

16. Pretty weak critique

In fact one really has to use their imagination to even guess what his point really is.

In his supercilious way, he would suggest that I am too dumb to understand his cloudy point.

Here's mine. The administration set out to avoid and undo the application of the Geneva Conventions. They succeeded.

Anything we hear now is a confusing mixture of denial and justifications by the entire chain of command in an attempt to disguise the truth. The rule of law is over. Anything goes.

[cestmoi]

17. The best Hitchen's trashing ever. Excerpt.

"For many years Hitchens awed readers with his formidable control over the English language. Now his ego delights in testing whether, through sheer manipulation of words, he can pass off flatulent emissions as bouquets."


"Hitchens has riotous fun heaping contempt on several of the volunteer "human shields" who left Iraq before the bombing began. They "obviously didn't have the guts," he jeers, hunkered down in his Washington foxhole. Bearing witness to his own bravery, Hitchens reports in March 2003 that, although even the wife of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is having doubts about going to war, "I am fighting to keep my nerve" - truly a profile in courage, as he exiles himself in the political wilderness, alongside the Bush administration, Congress, a majority of U.S. public opinion, and his employers in the major media. Outraged at the taunt that he who preaches war should perhaps consider fighting it, Hitchens impatiently recalls that, since September 11, "civilians at home are no safer than soldiers abroad," and that, in fact, he's not just a but the main target: "The whole point of the present phase of conflict is that we are faced with tactics that are directed primarily at civilians….It is amazing that this essential element of the crisis should have taken so long to sink into certain skulls" (emphasis in original). No doubt modesty and tact forbid Hitchens from drawing the obvious comparison: while cowardly American soldiers frantically covered themselves in protective gear and held their weapons at the ready, he patrolled his combat zone in Washington, D.C. unencumbered. Lest we forget, Hitchens recalls that ours is "an all-volunteer army" where soldiers willingly exchange "fairly good pay" for "obedience" to authority: "Who would have this any other way?" For sure, not those who will never have to "volunteer."



"Hitchens counted himself a Trotskyist and Chomsky a comrade, better now to announce that he supports Bush and counts Paul Wolfowitz a comrade. Their fates crossed when Wolfowitz and Hitchens both immediately glimpsed in September 11 the long-awaited opportunity: for Wolfowitz, to get into Iraq, for Hitchens, to get out of the left."

This is from a longer article tited "Fraternally Yours, Chris" The title refers to how ex-leftist Christopher Hitchens used to sign off his correspondence.

To read entire artice http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/id138.htm

[dudeness]

18. Yes..

Hitchens once sold copies of "socialist worker" on the streets of London..now he has taken the David Horowitz route to comfort and R/W adulation .the man has no credibility..

[papau]

20. Hitch is a great wordsmith but flatulent emissions do not become bouquets!

That was a well written trashing!!!

:-)

:-)

[KoKo]

21. "Flatulence Emissions!" OMG! said so well, who could top that when

speaking of Hitchins. I feel badly for "original poster" that some of us are spouting off about that piece of sh*t, Hitchens. It's not kind to do when someone wants us to talk about his post but for some of us he's a total "piece of work!"

[fedsron2us]

19. Hitchens is a saloon bar bore maquerading as a journalist.

Amazing to think that he was once a Trotskyist. Of course it is possible that like so many on the British far left he was always in the pay of the authorities. I remember attending Trade Union meetings in the past where my friends and I used to play the game of spotting the MI5/Special Branch infiltrator. We nearly always settled on the Marxist gob-shites who were forever encouraging the workers to take to the barricades. Many were suspected of being agent provocateurs working for the government.