Bush, Democrats draw ire of Seymour Hersh

Neither the Bush administration nor Democrats in Congress have covered themselves in glory during the war against terrorism or the runup to a possible war against Iraq.

That's the view of Seymour Hersh, an acclaimed investigative journalist who has ferreted out many government secrets during the past seven administrations.

Bush administration officials have employed obsessive secrecy and scare tactics for political gain, Hersh said Thursday at the Westminster Town Hall Forum. "They've got to keep us scared and they've got to keep us jacked up on Iraq" because national security and terrorism are the only issues where most Americans back Bush, he said.

"Their definition of national security and mine are different," he said. In this White House, disagreement is not dissent -- it's disloyalty. Dissent is treason."

As for the Democratic Party, it "seems to have disappeared," Hersh said. "The morality of the Democrats' position is astonishing to me. If the war turns out to be a disaster, it's good for us because we're not responsible. We didn't elect them to take a dive on this issue."

Hersh, now of the New Yorker, is best known for uncovering the 1968 My Lai massacre by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War but also has written extensively about the CIA, the violent overthrow of Chile's government in 1973, Gulf War syndrome and the war in Afghanistan. He makes no bones about the tilt of his politics, and said he would be glad to vote for Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., as often as he could.

Hersh noted that anyone reading newspapers these days is apt to be frightened. "But I'm just as scared as all of you," he said, citing his prodigious sources throughout government. "I don't know what they're doing."

He believes he does know why administration officials are focusing so loudly on Iraq. "If we're not talking about Saddam [Hussein], we're talking about Enron and Tyco," he said. "It's the best issue he has and he's playing it hard," he said of President Bush.

When the White House only belatedly revealed that Bush had been briefed in August 2001 about the possibility of a terrorist attack, it showed that "political expedience is more important than informing the public," Hersh said. "The possibility the president may have known something in advance would have been politically dangerous."

Based on what he has been told by sources, Hersh said he does not believe that an attack on Iraq is imminent. "There is no execute order for war," he said. "There's no agreement on who the next leader would be. There's no agreement in the military how to carry out the war . . . . It's not going to happen in the short run."

He called Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "this administration's Woody Allen." Noting that he has known Rumsfeld for years, he added, "Rummy is funny. He's also on a very hard path for America."

Of Bush's address to the United Nations last week, Hersh said, "He's restored irony to the American lexicon. He says 'you guys have to do it. But if you don't do it, I'll do it myself.' "