[Mb-civic] FW: Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest Seymour Hersh Article

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:52:49 -0500
Subject: Fwd: Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest
Seymour Hersh Article



Begin forwarded message:

>
> IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 17, 2005
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest Seymour
> Hersh
>  Article
> The Iranian regime¹s apparent nuclear ambitions and its
>  demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global
> challenge that
>  deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in
> the New
>  Yorker article titled ³The Coming Wars.²
>
> Mr. Hersh¹s article is so riddled with errors of fundamental
> fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed.
>
> Mr. Hersh¹s source(s) feed him with rumor, innuendo, and
>  assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not
> exist,
> and statements by officials that were never made.
>
> A sampling from this article alone includes:
>
> The post-election meeting he describes between the Secretary of
> Defense and
> the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not happen.
>
> The only civilians in the chain-of-command are the President and the
> Secretary of Defense, despite Mr. Hersh¹s confident assertion that the
> chain
> of command now includes two Department policy officials. His assertion
> is
> outrageous, and constitutionally specious.
>
> Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith
> and
> Israel, government or non-government, do not exist. Here, Mr. Hersh is
> building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy
> theorists.
> This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker.
>
> Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings. At one point
> in his
> article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military
> operations he
> describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even
> from
> U.S. military Combatant Commanders. Mr. Hersh later states, though,
> that
> the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command
> headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr.
> Hersh
> is to be believed.
>
> By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an
>  ³alternative history² novel. He is well along in that work, given the
> high
> quality of ³alternative present² that he has developed in several
> recent
> articles.
>
> Mr. Hersh¹s preference for single, anonymous, unofficial sources
> for his most fantastic claims makes it difficult to parse his
> discussion of
> Defense Department operations.
>
> Finally, the views and policies Mr. Hersh ascribes to Secretary
> Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, Under Secretary Feith, and other
> Department of Defense officials do not reflect their public or private
>  comments or administration policy.
>
> http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2005/nr20050117-1987.html
>


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