President Obama accused of LYING about intelligence which he said proved Assad was behind sarin gas attacks in Syria
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2520555/President-Obama-accused-lying-Syrian-intelligence-sarin-gas-attack-award-winning-journalist-Seymour-Hersh.html#ixzz2n742WjZl
- The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist claims the Obama Administration ‘cherry-picked intelligence’ on Syria
- Hersh, 76, cited conversations with military officials who spoke of their ‘immense frustration’ with the President
- Previously he had claimed that the official account of the 2011 raid which killed Osama Bin Laden as ‘one big lie’
- He says the US media is too ‘afraid’ to pick on Obama
By Marie-louise Olson and David Mccormack
PUBLISHED:22:14 EST, 8 December 2013| UPDATED:01:59 EST, 9 December 2013
Seymour Hersh, 76, who had previously described the official account of the 2011 raid which killed Osama Bin Laden as ‘one big lie,’ claims the current administration ‘cherry-picked intelligence’ on Syria.
Hersh first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has accused President Obama of lying to the American people earlier this year when he blamed President Bashar al-Assad for a sarin-gas attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians in August
Hersh, 76, cited conversations with military officials who spoke of their ‘immense frustration’ with the President
‘We know the Assad regime was responsible,’ President Obama told the nation in an address days after this revelation, when he said he had been pushed over the ‘red line’ to consider military intervention.
In Sunday’s London Review of Book, Hersh accused the administration of ‘cherry-picked intelligence,’ citing conversations with intelligence and military officials.
‘A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analyzed in real time, as the attack was happening,’ he wrote.
Some 355 people showing ‘neurotoxic symptoms’ died August 21 after the deadly sarin gas attack which U.S. authorities accused forces loyal to President Assad of carrying out
President Bashar al-Assad repeatedly denied that his soldiers carried out the sarin-gas attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians in August
According to Hersh, the situation reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when President Johnson’s administration had reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of their early bombings of North Vietnam.
Hersh also said that his contacts spoke of ‘immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy’ regarding the current President.
‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this guy [Obama] when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’
Hersh also claims that the administration buried intelligence on the fundamentalist group/rebel group al-Nusra related to the sarin attacks, plus he repeated his accusation that the U.S. media fails to properly question what information is given to them by the government.
A United Nations resolution ultimately prevented American military intervention, but Hersh believes that the information he has unveiled is similar to when President George W. Bush justified his invasion of Iraq with evidence concerning nuclear weapons which later turned out not to be true.
In early September, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States had proof that the nerve-gas attack in Syria was made on Assad’s orders
‘Lying’: Hersh says ‘not one word’ of the Obama administration’s account of the raid that supposedly killed Osama Bin Laden is true. The government has never released pictures of Bin Laden’s dead body to the public
‘The cherry-picking was similar to the process used to justify the Iraq war,’ wrote Hersh.
This isn’t the first time he has accused President Obama of lying. In September he said that ‘not one word’ of the administration’s narrative on the killing of Osama Binladen was true.
At that time Hersh also savaged the U.S. media for failing to challenge the White House on a whole host of issues, from NSA spying, to drone attacks, to aggression against Syria.
He said the Navy Seal raid that supposedly resulted in the death of the Al-Qaeda terror leader, Hersh said, ‘not one word of it is true’.
According to Hersh the problem is that the U.S. media is allowing the Obama administration to get away with lying.
President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and members of the national security team watch the raid live from the White House’s Situation Room on May 1, 2011
The compound: The Pakistan home of the al Qaeda leader was in flames after it was attacked by Navy Seals
Hersh said the American press spends ‘so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would’.
In his opinion, the solution would be to shut down news networks like NBC and ABC and fire 90 per cent of mainstream editors and replace them with ‘real’ journalists who are not afraid to speak truth to power.
‘The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple,’ he said.
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