(2004-10-13) Hersh Berkeley Iraq

Seymour Hersh gave a speech at Berkeley on the War On Iraq. While Hersh blamed the White House and the Pentagon for the Iraq quagmire and America's besmirched world image, he was stymied by how it all happened. "How could eight or nine neoconservatives come and take charge of this government?" he asked. "They overran the bureaucracy, they overran the Congress, they overran the press, and they overran the military! So you say to yourself, How fragile is this democracy?"... "He thinks he's wearing the white hat," he said, adding that is what makes this administration different from previous ones whose hypocrisy Hersh has exposed. George W Bush and the Neo-Con-s "are not hypocrites."... As for John Kerry's war plans, Hersh said he wished he could tell him to stop talking as if the senator's plan for Iraq could somehow still eke out a victory there... "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'"