Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's recent blockbuster article claiming that the Obama Administration lied about the Navy Seal operation to kill Osama Bin Laden has set off a battle between the journalist and the White House. Did the government lie about bin Laden?
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's recent blockbuster article claiming that the Obama Administration lied about the Navy Seal operation to kill Osama Bin Laden has set off a battle between the journalist and the White House. Did the government lie about bin Laden?
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's recent blockbuster article claiming that the Obama Administration lied about the Navy Seal operation to kill Osama Bin Laden has set off a battle between the journalist and the White House. Did the government lie about bin Laden?
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Thank you.
Good to be with you.
Good.
We want to dissect a major report put out this week.
It's been discussed very thoroughly on the major networks and that has to do with the major article that Seymour Hirsch put out dealing with the killing of bin Laden, what we're supposed to believe and what we're not to believe.
And he really has opened up a lot of questions.
First off, Seymour Hirsch is not a name to dismiss easily.
Right now it seems like some people would like to dismiss him because he's challenging the government explanation of what happened.
But when you look back at it, he has a reputation to protect.
That's the most valuable thing to him, I believe, that he has.
He broke the Milai story.
Abu Ghraib, he broke that story.
And so he's been very active.
Yeah, he also actually, and back in 2013, his article, Who's Sarin, was an expose of the story told about the use of sarin gas in Syria that gave us within a hair's breadth of starting a war with Syria.
He pointed out that the evidence was not that Assad did it, that in fact it was the rebels who had used the gas.
You know, isn't it amazing how after things pass and people start talking about, well, we're not getting the straight scoop from this, whether it's the Kennedy assassination or 9-11 or whatever, they're always questioning.
But so often, the American people don't question much when they're told to be scared, you know, that the world's coming to an end, they're going to invade us, Hitler is coming to get us, and Saddam Hussein has a nuclear weapon and the Iranians are coming.
That always amazes me about why at one time they are easily frightened and believe the lies and the other times it takes them a while to wake up.
It doesn't make sense when it's the most important issues you're not supposed to question.
You're not supposed to have skepticism, but I think, you know, Hirsch's expose, for whatever faults it may have, it gives lie to that.
It suggests that this is exactly the time you should be skeptical is when they're telling you something that's important.
And I think, generally speaking, from my viewpoint on the report, I think it's very, very valuable because I have a lot of respect for Seymour Hirsch.
I believe he came to our office one time and presented a program for us.
But his history is good, but that doesn't mean that I am knowledgeable enough to dismiss all the criticism thrown at him because maybe he did get a fact or two wrong.
But I think also the goal mostly is to discredit him.
And he's not an easy person to discredit because we are, he is challenging the status quo.
But it made me think, you know, about the way the story he told that Bush ran to get the credit and announce and preempted everybody else, preempted the Pakistanis and the Saudis and rushed to the podium and get in front to give this speech.
It reminded me of what George W. Bush did after Saddam Hussein was captured.
You know, mission accomplished.
I think we'll probably put this down as Obama's mission accomplished statement as we look back on what he was doing.
I think what's so interesting from the Hirsch report is it shows the machinations behind the scenes to create a narrative.
It really is like something out of a Hollywood studio or remember the movie Wag the Dog, how they hire a production company to come in and frame the whole thing in a dramatic narrative.
Whereas I think most people at the time when they were told the story, my guess is my instinct, and I bet it was yours too.
That sounds incredible.
That doesn't sound.
I remember it very well because we were in the middle of a campaign when this broke, and I was very, very skeptical of it.
And it turns out that one of the major things now with this report is the lack of necessity to march in and kill bin Laden immediately because right now what they're saying, there was no fight, nobody defending him.
He didn't even have a guard.
He was a sick old man.
And my thoughts were, you know, this is a valuable asset.
Why don't we at least talk to this guy?
Well, it turns out that there might be a reason which Hearst relates to, and that is that it was sort of a collusion between Saudis, the Pakistani government, and the U.S. government to sort of keep him there for a while because the Pakistanis and the government was in one position.
Their people were in another position because they liked bin Laden.
And of course, some people say, well, Hirsch got it wrong because there's no way the Saudis would like bin Laden and sort of keep him safe and secure and not let him be taken.
But now it makes more sense when you think about the information we're getting about how the Saudis may have been in collusion on 9-11 and why we can't read those 28 pages on that report.
So that sort of makes some sense there that why it was delayed.
And evidently it was the government of Pakistan that had a lot of cards to play.
And it wasn't until we used the great blackmail.
We're not going to give you any more of American taxpayers money for free.
No more foreign aid.
And that's when they came around.
And I think I noticed that when he was first given up, when the U.S. was first told where bin Laden was, it wasn't this $100 billion intelligence that we pay for every year, but it was actually just an intelligence officer from Pakistan looking to collect the reward money.
So just a lucky accident.
I remember very well that night when we heard the announcement because it happened so quickly.
They went in, they took him.
There's great heroes, and the president was watching every step along the way.
And he was killed in a firefight, and we buried him at sea with Muslim rituals.
We did it, you know, authentically, and it was all okay.
And we checked within hours, we got his DNA checked.
We knew it was him.
And this is what Hirsch challenges.
So it's, you know, maybe long term, if they'd have told us the truth, it wouldn't have mattered this much.
But why do they concoct all these lies?
I mean, at the time, though, if you question it, you were considered unpatriotic or you're defending bin Laden, what's your problem?
You weren't even, you didn't feel like you had the right to even question it.
But the thing about how this appears to be so stage-managed, the story, it really does make you wonder about the other things that the government tells you.
For example, we keep being told that Russia's invading Ukraine and they're ready to take the Baltics.
So are they lying or not?
Well, you know, I think that's the key question, when do we believe our government?
And I think less so every day.
And, you know, they think it's unpatriotic to say, well, that's good.
Well, it is good for people to not blindly follow politicians who have gotten in power through a lot of money and military industrial complex money and all of this.
I mean, that's what you're supposed to do.
That was my understanding of where the early patriots came from.
They were willing to challenge what the government was doing to them.
So I think it's healthy to try to figure out what is true and what is not true.
One thing that is probably going to backfire him on this whole process was that they rejected the idea of capture because they didn't want him to reveal anything.
He might make a case for what was going on.
But in a way, they turned him into a dead martyr.
He's probably much more of a martyr now than he ever would have been any other way.
Yeah, exactly.
You have to wonder about it.
You know, and thinking about the other interventions and how these lies have actually caused harm.
Remember in Gaddafi, they said that we had to go take out Gaddafi so that democracy could spring up.
Gaddafi said, hey, the people in Benghazi that I'm trying to fight against are a bunch of terrorists.
And the U.S. said, oh, he's crazy, he's lying.
But it turns out they were terrorists.
You know, the complexity of all this, I look at it and it's hard to sort out sometimes.
And even the people who are the truth tellers, and I put Hirsch in that category, might not have everything right.
But just think what a different world it would be if we weren't involved in all these countries.
You know, troops and military purchases, 150 countries always involved.
And if we didn't have that to worry about, how different this would be.
But, no, it's constant.
It's a cost.
People die over this.
We disrupt what we consider imperfect governments.
Assad, totally imperfect.
Saddam Hussein, totally imperfect.
But compared to what?
You know, obviously, the people who are still cheering on and saying, you know, Iraq was a good thing, and I'd do the same thing all over again.
But, you know, nobody in their right mind could say, well, Iraq is much better off without Saddam Hussein.
Matter of fact, if Saddam Hussein had been killed and there was no government or very little government, I imagine the people in Iraq probably could have sorted things out a lot differently than they had with our intervention.
So once again, I think it makes the case for non-interventionism.
Stay out of the affairs of other nations.
Something Very Special00:00:44
And I think we'd all be better off.
Well, anyway, I think the article obviously is an important article.
It's very detailed, very complex, and people will be reading it and discussing it.
The critics will be there.
Maybe some criticism will be justified, but at the same time, some of this criticism is just to destroy the credibility of Hirsch because they want to maintain the official position and the mission accomplished speech by Obama.
And that would be, you know, something very special if we could just get to the bottom of it and get to the truth.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.