> Instead of trying to decide if Valentine (and by extension
> CounterPunch,
> which often publishes columnists who do not agree entirely with the
> editors) has committed lese-majeste by criticizing one of the good
> guys,
> we should assess what he said. CIA policies (which are of course
> policies
> of Mills' elite, to which Valentine alludes) are consistent from
> Phoenix
> through Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib, and yet Hersh's October 2001 article
> does read as a "call for unleashing the CIA on Osama bin Laden and his
> Al
> Qeada accomplices." --CGE
Do you perchance have a URL where the October 2001 article is available? Before I agree that Hersh was in fact shilling for the CIA, I'd like to read it for myself. (Of course, I could tromp over to the library and see if I could look up a copy there, but I'm too busy and lazy to do that right now.)
It's true that lots of journalists were calling for Al-Qaida's blood at that time; after all, there was a strong feeling of revenge throughout the country at that time, and Hersh might have succumbed to it to some extent. (A lot of reporters who are generally on the left side of things are also patriotic enough to feel that their country has real enemies that sometimes need to be fought.) I'm not sure of his exact political position, but I think he probably took the view (at least in 2001) that the CIA was an institution that had some value, if it were "reformed" in some ways.
Though I disagree with him on that point, I would still tend to give more credence to him, as a reporter, than to Valentine, who admits right at the start that he is a literary critic (my opinion of their grip on reality is rather negative), and who consistently misspells "Abu Ghraib," which every other media outlet uses, as "Abu Ghoryab." While he may be an expert on the Arabic language, and wants to use the latter because it is a better transliteration of the Arabic, I think it is more likely that he is just a sloppy writer.
One reason I'd like to look at Hersh's original article is that there is every possibility that he was quoting these things from CIA officers because he was doing his reporter's job: informing the public about what the CIA was thinking. Do reporters always agree with everything they quote their sources as saying? Hardly.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.