Hersh on Late Edition last night, article coming in NYer on Bush

A MUST READ transcript of an interview last night by Leslie Blitzer of Sy Hersh:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/27/le.01.html

I diaried about it here:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/27/165824/60

Hersh is coming out with the following bombshells:

* The current exit strategy is to pull out US ground forces and support the feeble Iraqi army with American air power. Eventually, Iraqis will be calling in air strikes. Senior Air Force generals are very concerned about handing that kind of power to the very unreliable Iraqi commanders.
* Bush is in a bubble. Even senior generals have no way of getting messages through to Bush.
* Bush is in some kind of utopian haze, he thinks history will vindicate him in 20 years and is not very concerned about the difficulties of the present. He disparages any bad news he hears.
* Jack Murtha has deep connections with the current senior generals and his call for withdrawal is based on what he has been hearing from them. He may even be speaking on their behalf.
* The White House was enraged about Murtha.
* There is talk about Congress cutting off the budget for the war, but tensions have not yet reached that point.

...called Vietnamization. Essentially, we'll be there forever, and slowly withdrawing troops at strategic times, is a cover to basically try to quell public opinion and make it seem like we're leaving.

give a shit how many Iraqis they kill, or who the people on the ground they'd be bombing even are. This makes me ill...

... for his parole hearings.

Juan Cole and Murtha both proposed this plan. It will definitely kill many Iraqis, but if you think that bush doesn't care, you are correct.

Look, bush never had a plan for Iraq...none. Jay Garner took his golfing buddies with him, and Bremmer is a psycho who refused to talk to anyone outside his inner circle. There has not been a plan because bush and rummy "Hate nation building." They worried that the right-wing nutz might catch on that this was the greatest attempt at nation building that the world has ever seen. So they never made a plan.

Now they are caught in the cross-hairs of history. In order to land softly and get out, it would mean talking to our "enemies" like Syria and Iran. Ideology trumps common sense once again, and so they are unwilling to do that even though the region's stability is on the line. Nevertheless, they also want out because of the '06 elections. What to do?

Well, how moving our troops out to the perimeter of Iraq and bombing them? What they will not do is put the structure of civilian support in place for a fledgling government. They will not ask the neighborhood for help in containing the blaze. They will not put our country first.

They are assholes who care more about their endless partisan campaign than you or me or the children of Iraq and America.

It sounds as if we have a president who is not just out of touch with public opinion but one who maybe infarct psychotic. Talking with God and being sent on a mission by God are statements I heard from patients while working in a psychiatric hospital.