From My Lai to Abu Ghraib

Seymour Hersh is hated in a whole lot of unexpected places. If there's Americans (or others) out there who can put their finger on why this is, I'd like to know. I realise some people just don't buy his theory (see the 'Dark Side of Camelot') that JFK was a reckless right-wing populist who's foreign policy was a nightmare. For some this ruins their own Kennedy assination theories, ie. that he was murdered cos he was going to take America out of Vietnam. Some ("Shame on You Sy for that Awful book on JFK" David R. Wrone) say Hersh does it "...with a corruption of scholarship perhaps unequalled in recent times."

But, as Holden might say "Digression!". Sorry.

Hersh's latest book, "Against All Enemies," which details the extent of Gulf War Syndrome and the US government's attempts to cover it up, has been selling poorly and ignored by a surprising number of reviewers.

Hersh is still remembered (and hated) for his 1972 "Cover-Up," a report on the Army's cowardly investigation of the My Lai massacre - the bloodbath Hersh had previously exposed in his blockbuster "My Lai 4" . When he revealed in 1991's "The Samson Option" that Israel was secretly stockpiling nuclear weapons, the response was also stifled yawns.

Now he concentrates on Rumsfeld and the US torture programme. Read it in full in the New Yorker, which, despite a gruesome layout which makes the front half of it virtually unreadable occasionaly churns out some good shit. Here it is the Gray Zone...

Also bookmark the excellent Anti-War.com here.