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Few knew in 2000 that Bush was going to end up with neoconservatives all over the place. And once 9/11 happened, I think it's fair to say that eight or nine neocons have had an enormous influence. The whole solution to every problem was to go after Iraq. This had been a neoconservative mantra for ten years. There was no secret about it.

Seymour Hersh

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Seymour Hersh
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: April 8
Historian
Journalist
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Chicago
Illinois
Seymour Myron Hersh
Seymour M. Hersh
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More quotes by Seymour Hersh

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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.
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We're going to be really ashamed of ourselves when this whole story about Guantanamo comes out. Guantanamo is a really depraved place.
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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.
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I'm worried about people who say Bush is lying. It's much more frightening that he's not lying, that he believes what he believes: that it's his mission to change the Middle East into a democracy. That's more unnerving.
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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.
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Grab whom you must. Do what you want.
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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 Gaddafi was our Hitler.
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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.
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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.
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There's been a lot of talk about how bad the reporting was, particularly with the George W. Bush Administration after 9/11. 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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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I don't know Condoleezza Rice personally. I'm sure she's a nice lady, and I'm sure she plays the piano well. But she was a very bad National Security Adviser. The National Security Adviser is supposed to be an arbiter of policy and open minded in internal debates.
Seymour Hersh
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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
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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