Seymour Hersh on Iraq

Yesterday evening CSPAN broadcast a speech given by Seymour Hersh to a college in Virginia. He was speaking about Iraq. Earlier this year, Hersh wrote an article for the New Yorker on the torture of Iraqi prisoners atAbu Ghraib. See:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

He was discussing the war in more general terms. Basically he does not think we went in there for oil, but rather because the neo-conservatives in the Bush adminisration were convinced that invading Iraq would be a cakewalk and would lead to the collapse of other authoritarian regimes throughout the Mideast, based on the assumption that the region was like Eastern Europe and the people lovers of democracy. Of course that did not happen and now we are bogged down in a war with no foreseeable end or even improvement. He says Bush or Kerry must develop an exit strategy, but neither have in his view.

The Bush administration seems to suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder in its approach toward Iraq and Afghanistan, poorly prepared for what would develop after we went into these countries. We the people will have to pay the price for generations to come.