Seymour Hersh famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn't happening now, but I will tell you, there has never been an American army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Baby #Army #Iraq
Where would we in Washington and we in America be without the Center? We would know much less about the workings of our Congress, and our tax dollars. We would know much less about the powers of the Executive, and its ability to hide wrong doing behind secrecy and classification. The Center takes the notion of integrity very seriously, and its investigations are a model for today's good journalism and, we all hope, an inspiration for the mainstream press to do more.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Integrity #Inspiration #America
The idea of photographing an Arab man naked and having him simulate homosexual activity, and having an American GI woman in the photographs, is the end of society in their eyes.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Eye #Men #Ideas
Grab whom you must. Do what you want.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Want #What You Want
Is there anything more dangerous than an ideologue who doesn't know he's wrong?
-- Seymour Hersh

#Ideologues #Dangerous
I have a theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Curves #Tabula Rasa #Theory
Journalism is a great profession. It's complicated now. People talk about the demise of investigative reporting. I was a judge in some award contest recently, and the stuff that is being done by major newspapers, and local, regional papers around the country, is great. Newspapers play an amazing role in our society, and I still think they are important. I'm sorry newspaper circulation is down. Ultimately, the importance of newspapers can't be replaced.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Country #Sorry #Thinking
I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can't have that in public life.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Lying #People #Henry Kissinger
I say openly that I am an anti-war person, with the point being, show me some reason not to be against this war. You have to be sort of asleep at the switch not to be critical of it. And the parallel between one quagmire we went through in Vietnam and the one we're in now is clear for everybody to see.
-- Seymour Hersh

#War #Quagmire #Vietnam
The neoconservatives are a small circle, and they're all sort of holding hands as they develop their policy, and outsiders aren't allowed. If you agree with the guys on the inside, you're a genius. If you disagree, you're a traitor, a pariah, you're an apostate, and you're not allowed in.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Hands #Circles #Guy
We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler.
-- Seymour Hersh

#America #People #Littles
When George W.Bush attacked Afghanistan, it was widely hailed, and the failure of our war there wasn't understood. Within a few months of attacking Afghanistan, Bush clearly moved on to get ready for Iraq, long before Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda were dispensed with. There was never any serious debate in the press about whether even the notion that every Taliban was our enemy was valid. A lot of assumptions about that war were never challenged.
-- Seymour Hersh

#War #Long #Enemy
One of the terrible things about George W. Bush Administration is that nobody wants to hear bad news. The neoconservatives are a small circle, and they're all sort of holding hands as they develop their policy, and outsiders aren't allowed. If you agree with the guys on the inside, you're a genius. If you disagree, you're a traitor, a pariah, you're an apostate, and you're not allowed in.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Guy #Holding Hands #Genius
I can tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the American people think. There's going to be an awful lot more body bags.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Thinking #People #Bags
They are people who, by and large, think the Administration's policy - and the Iranian case is a classic one - is very stupid. They can't get that view in, and so by talking to me, they accomplish something. It's a way of saying, this ought to be discussed, we got to get this out. That's a form of patriotism, in a funny way.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Stupid #Thinking #Views
I think for the great majority of the American people, they've suffered economically under Obama and they really are looking forward to Trump delivering more money in their pocket. I think they haven't lost faith yet.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Thinking #People #Looking Forward
We'd be better off if the whole purpose of the adventure in Iraq was, say, to protect Israel or to protect the flow of oil to America and keep it at a reasonable price and try to get some more control. If it was about oil, going into Iraq, I guess, could have made sense. But at a certain point, when the insurgency began and we were in real trouble, there would have been some awareness that we were going to jeopardize the oil.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Real #Adventure #Israel
It doesn't matter what a majority of Americans say. George W.Bush is going to do what he thinks he must do. And history may be tough on him in the next ten years but I guess he rationalizes that in fifty or 100 years they'll bless us because there will be - maybe not in his lifetime, but someday-a democratic Iraq emulating the United States in its liberalism, in its fair-mindedness, and that democracy will spread to Iran and Syria, and that whole part of the Middle East will be happy, and terrorism will be gone, and the Israelis will be flourishing, and the oil will flow. That's his vision.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Thinking #Vision #Democracy
We're going to be really ashamed of ourselves when this whole story about Guantanamo comes out. Guantanamo is a really depraved place.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Stories #Ashamed #Depraved
I think journalist is a great profession. It's complicated now. People talk about the demise of investigative reporting.Newspapers play an amazing role in our society, and I still think they are important. I'm sorry newspaper circulation is down. Ultimately, the importance of newspapers can't be replaced.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Sorry #Thinking #People
I would recommend any American who wants to understand where the government is going in the next four years of George W. Bush presidency to get a copy of her confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's a road map, and it's pretty frightening testimony. Their definition of where democracy should go in the Middle East doesn't include Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan; it only includes Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Democracy #Confirmation #Relation
I would think Trump would feel free to bomb Syria any time he wanted. Nobody clearly seems to care very much about if we bomb Syria. Whether or not we have authority, it's just not of interest to most people.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Thinking #People #Care
The general assumption, which I think is a valid one, is that a lot of the major media were on their heels a little bit and prone to share the grief of the nation and to give Bush all the support it could.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Grief #Thinking #Media
The funny thing is, this is what everyone assumes, that anybody who talks has an axe to grind. I've been around a long time, and yes, there obviously are people who disagree with policy who talk to me, but it's less axes to grind than people who are really motivated. One of the terrible things about this Administration is that nobody wants to hear bad news.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Axes #Funny Things #Long
Essentially Rumsfeld wins, Cheney wins, and the CIA and State Department lose. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have more centralized control over intelligence, analysis, and operations than ever before. And the way they interpret the law, if the President authorizes an intelligence mission to be run covertly by the Pentagon, they don't have to tell anybody, including Congress, about it because the President is the commander in chief.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Running #Winning #Law
How can you have a security guarantee? The Europeans can give their security guarantees to Iran all they want in return for their stopping their enrichment. But as long as America says we're going to stay out here and we're not going to drop the stick, we're going to pound you if we have to, it's not going to work.
-- Seymour Hersh

#Giving #Long #Going To Work

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