37+ Seymour Hersh Quotes On War, Ukraine And Israel

Seymour Hersh is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He is best known for his reporting on the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Hersh has also won two National Magazine Awards and five George Polk Awards. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Seymour Hersh on war, ukraine, israel.

Top 10 Seymour Hersh Quotes

1. I have a theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.
2. Is there anything more dangerous than an ideologue who doesn't know he's wrong?
3. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can't have that in public life.
4. The idea of photographing an Arab man naked and having him simulate homosexual activity, and having an American GI woman in the photographs, is the end of society in their eyes.
5. We're going to be really ashamed of ourselves when this whole story about Guantanamo comes out. Guantanamo is a really depraved place.
6. It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts.
7. Grab whom you must. Do what you want.
8. I can tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the American people think. There's going to be an awful lot more body bags.
9. I'm a better American than 99% of the guys in the White House.

Seymour Hersh Quotes About Bush

If Bush had gone into Iraq for cynical reasons, we could cut our losses now. What's frightening is that he did it for ideological reasons, and therefore he's not going to get out. So it isn't ultimately about oil or about Israel, it's about a belief. — Seymour Hersh

The National Security Adviser is supposed to be an arbiter of policy and open minded in internal debates. But the playing field was never balanced. It was always tilted toward Rumsfeld's position, which is obviously the same as Bush's. — Seymour Hersh

I'm worried about people who say Bush is lying. It's much more frightening that he's not lying, that he believes what he believes: that it's his mission to change the Middle East into a democracy. That's more unnerving. — Seymour Hersh

Bush can talk about 100,000 people wanting to go work in the police or in the army. It's because there's nothing else for them to do. They're willing to stand in line to get bombed because they want to take care of their family. — Seymour Hersh

It doesn't matter that Bush scares the hell out of me. What matters is that he scares the hell out of a lot of very important people in Washington who can't speak out, in the military, in the intelligence community. — Seymour Hersh

The general assumption, which I think is a valid one, is that a lot of the major media were on their heels a little bit and prone to share the grief of the nation and to give Bush all the support it could. — Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh Quotes About People

I think for the great majority of the American people, they've suffered economically under Obama and they really are looking forward to Trump delivering more money in their pocket. I think they haven't lost faith yet. — Seymour Hersh

We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gaddafi was our Hitler. — Seymour Hersh

I would think Trump would feel free to bomb Syria any time he wanted. Nobody clearly seems to care very much about if we bomb Syria. Whether or not we have authority, it's just not of interest to most people. — Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh Famous Quotes And Sayings

In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn't happening now, but I will tell you, there has never been an American army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq. — Seymour Hersh

The neoconservatives are a small circle, and they're all sort of holding hands as they develop their policy, and outsiders aren't allowed. If you agree with the guys on the inside, you're a genius. If you disagree, you're a traitor, a pariah, you're an apostate, and you're not allowed in. — Seymour Hersh

I say openly that I am an anti-war person, with the point being, show me some reason not to be against this war. You have to be sort of asleep at the switch not to be critical of it. And the parallel between one quagmire we went through in Vietnam and the one we're in now is clear for everybody to see. — Seymour Hersh

I don't know whether God talks to him or whether he's trying to undo what his father did. But he believes in the mission. The body bags aren't going to deter him. Public dissent isn't going to deter him. He's going to go ahead. And that's more frightening. — Seymour Hersh

Few knew in 2000 that Bush was going to end up with neoconservatives all over the place. And once 9/11 happened, I think it's fair to say that eight or nine neocons have had an enormous influence. The whole solution to every problem was to go after Iraq. This had been a neoconservative mantra for ten years. There was no secret about it. — Seymour Hersh

How can you have a security guarantee? The Europeans can give their security guarantees to Iran all they want in return for their stopping their enrichment. But as long as America says we're going to stay out here and we're not going to drop the stick, we're going to pound you if we have to, it's not going to work. — Seymour Hersh

I would recommend any American who wants to understand where the government is going in the next four years of George W. Bush presidency to get a copy of her confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's a road map, and it's pretty frightening testimony. Their definition of where democracy should go in the Middle East doesn't include Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan; it only includes Iraq, Iran, and Syria. — Seymour Hersh

One of the terrible things about George W. Bush Administration is that nobody wants to hear bad news. The neoconservatives are a small circle, and they're all sort of holding hands as they develop their policy, and outsiders aren't allowed. If you agree with the guys on the inside, you're a genius. If you disagree, you're a traitor, a pariah, you're an apostate, and you're not allowed in. — Seymour Hersh

Charles Graner is certainly guilty of terrible misjudgment. There's always a double standard. Everyone was happy to go to Graner's trial and write stories about how bad he is. And he is. But every time he tried to get an officer to testify, the officer either would invoke the Fifth Amendment or the judge would refuse to allow him to testify. We really didn't air out the issues. — Seymour Hersh

I think journalist is a great profession. It's complicated now. People talk about the demise of investigative reporting.Newspapers play an amazing role in our society, and I still think they are important. I'm sorry newspaper circulation is down. Ultimately, the importance of newspapers can't be replaced. — Seymour Hersh

Richard Nixon clearly broke the law in the cover up of Watergate and hush money payments. That was all criminal activity. With these guys, we're not talking about the kind of common crimes that Nixon committed. I can't tell you whether they are technically breaking the law, but basically, the American government has been hijacked by neoconservatives. They are taking an awful lot of national security operations into the White House. — Seymour Hersh

I don't know Condoleezza Rice personally. I'm sure she's a nice lady, and I'm sure she plays the piano well. But she was a very bad National Security Adviser. The National Security Adviser is supposed to be an arbiter of policy and open minded in internal debates. — Seymour Hersh

There's been a lot of talk about how bad the reporting was, particularly with the George W. Bush Administration after 9/11. The general assumption, which I think is a valid one, is that a lot of the major media were on their heels a little bit and prone to share the grief of the nation and to give Bush all the support it could. — Seymour Hersh

Essentially Rumsfeld wins, Cheney wins, and the CIA and State Department lose. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have more centralized control over intelligence, analysis, and operations than ever before. And the way they interpret the law, if the President authorizes an intelligence mission to be run covertly by the Pentagon, they don't have to tell anybody, including Congress, about it because the President is the commander in chief. — Seymour Hersh

The reality is that Qaddafi has been trying to talk to us about his weapons system for years, and we ignored him. The Libyans even came to me about two years ago and offered me a chance to go through their facilities because they couldn't get anybody's attention here. — Seymour Hersh

They are people who, by and large, think the Administration's policy - and the Iranian case is a classic one - is very stupid. They can't get that view in, and so by talking to me, they accomplish something. It's a way of saying, this ought to be discussed, we got to get this out. That's a form of patriotism, in a funny way. — Seymour Hersh

When George W.Bush attacked Afghanistan, it was widely hailed, and the failure of our war there wasn't understood. Within a few months of attacking Afghanistan, Bush clearly moved on to get ready for Iraq, long before Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda were dispensed with. There was never any serious debate in the press about whether even the notion that every Taliban was our enemy was valid. A lot of assumptions about that war were never challenged. — Seymour Hersh

The funny thing is, this is what everyone assumes, that anybody who talks has an axe to grind. I've been around a long time, and yes, there obviously are people who disagree with policy who talk to me, but it's less axes to grind than people who are really motivated. One of the terrible things about this Administration is that nobody wants to hear bad news. — Seymour Hersh

We'd be better off if the whole purpose of the adventure in Iraq was, say, to protect Israel or to protect the flow of oil to America and keep it at a reasonable price and try to get some more control. If it was about oil, going into Iraq, I guess, could have made sense. But at a certain point, when the insurgency began and we were in real trouble, there would have been some awareness that we were going to jeopardize the oil. — Seymour Hersh

Life Lessons by Seymour Hersh

1. Seymour Hersh's work demonstrates the importance of investigative journalism, as he uncovered and reported on stories that the mainstream media had not.
2. His work also highlights the importance of perseverance and dedication to uncovering the truth, as many of his stories were difficult to uncover and verify.
3. Finally, Hersh's work demonstrates the power of speaking truth to power, as he exposed government lies and corruption to the public.