Seymour Hersh: US troops executing prisoners in Afghanistan, journalist says

[unhappycamper]

US troops executing prisoners in Afghanistan, journalist says
By David Edwards
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 -- 9:16 am

The journalist who helped break the story that detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were being tortured by their US jailers told an audience at a journalism conference last month that American soldiers are now executing prisoners in Afghanistan.

New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh also revealed that the Bush Administration had developed advanced plans for a military strike on Iran.

At the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva, Hersh criticized President Barack Obama, and alleged that US forces are engaged in "battlefield executions."

"I'll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan," Hersh said. "They're being executed on the battlefield. It's unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn't necessarily get reported. Things don't change.:

"What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban," Hersh added. "You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free.

[amborin]

1. knr

[G_j]

2. OK, Sy...

under the bus!

[Echo In Light]

3. I'd imagine there's all kinds of evil being carried out in the name of 'defending freedumb'

... or whatever the hell the 'official' justifier is these days

[tekisui]

4. knr. Watch Sy be denigrated for speaking the truth.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Sy Hersh is a long respected reporter, goes way back.

I have always found him credible.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Any evidence for this extraordinary claim?

[grantcart]

11. Hersh

The guy has a record for being right on exactly these types of incidents and should be taken seriously.

It appears from Hersh's own statement to be an isolated incident that he has heard from a few soldiers.

Hersh stating it alone requires that we get the facts.



If this was a widespread problem I would have expected the Taliban to have been expoiting it before Hersh - they are very good at it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. Hersh has a record for writing a lot of checks that the evidence can't cash.

He's been doing this for awhile now.

I think the last doozy was that Cheney had been leaving behind some super secret shadow government behind to spy on Obama.

This is not "throwing Hersh under the Obama bus," he's been making claims without evidence since before the Obama administration.

Maybe he's write, but without any evidence there's no more reason to believe his word than anybody else who makes extraordinary claims without evidence.

[troubledamerican]

18. "Maybe he's write"? HiFructose's Pulitzer Prize

So much for your literacy.

Now for your credibility vs Sy Hersh's:

My Lai Massacre = PULITZER PRIZE, 1970
On November 12, 1969, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai Massacre. The report reduced American public support for the Vietnam War in the United States.

His 1983 book The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House won him the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times book prize in biography.

KAL 007
In his 1986 book The Target is Destroyed (Random House), Hersh alleged that the Soviet shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007 in September 1983 was due to a combination of Soviet incompetence and United States intelligence operations intended to confuse Soviet responses. Later releases of CIA information confirmed that there was a indeed Reagan Administration PSYOPS campaign against the Soviet Union. This campaign included the largest US Pacific Fleet exercise ever held, in April to May 1983. One report stated that the Soviets "probably didn't know (KAL 007) was a civilian aircraft".

REVEALING ABU GHRAIB -- In May 2004, The New Yorker published Hersh's series of articles describing the illegal treatment of detainees by US military police at Abu Ghraib. The articles revealed the illegal role of private military contractors in prisoner abuse. The articles also revealed the CIA's role in Abu Ghraib torture, as well as in Bagram Internment Facility and Guantanamo Bay. Hersh's sources revealed Don Rumsfeld's direct role.


Hmmm.

HiFructose or Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh? A tough choice.

[HughMoran]

7. LBN thread here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4378221

They need to investigate this NOW.

[Autumn]

8. Seymour Hersh?

Why does he hate Obama? I thought he only hated Bush. Someone will be along to debunk this.

[grantcart]

9. Hersh is credible and it needs to be investigated

[Gecko6400]

10. And his evidence is,

what, hearsay????

[Echo In Light]

12. Yeah. Just like the videos of children being sodomized in prison camps.

[tekisui]

13. Hersh has reliable sources and is usually proven right.

[Individualist]

16. Pulitzer prize winners don't publish hearsay.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Using whatever means necessary to "extract" roses and cheers from grateful Afghans. K&R

Not to mention favorable PR "victories" in a lost war.

[Soylent Brice]

17. K&R