Military waging war against the White House (Seymour Hersh)

[Mark Crispin Miller]

Military Waging War Against The White House

Huffington Post
October 23, 2009

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/23/seymour-hersh-military-is_n_332139.html

In addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States military is also fighting

a war against the Obama administration at the White House, Seymour Hersh said in a

little-noted speech at Duke University on October 13. The military is "in a war against the

White House -- and they feel they have Obama boxed in," he said.

Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre

in Vietnam and the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, sees an undercurrent of racism in the Pentagon's dealings with the White House. "They think he's weak and the wrong color. Yes, there's racism

in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it's true and we all know it."

As Neil Offen writes in the Durham Herald Sun:
http://tinyurl.com/yfvu6qr

    "A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble," he said. By leaking

    information that the commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says the

    war would be lost without an additional 40,000 American troops, top brass have put Obama

    in a no-win situation, Hersh contended.

    "If he gives them the extra troops they're asking for, he loses politically," Hersh said. "And if

    he doesn't give them the troops, he also loses politically."

Hersh considers the worsening situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the principal test of the Obama presidency, which will require the cooperation of the top military brass. Obama must

face up to the military, Hersh said. "He's either going to let the Pentagon run him or he has to

run the Pentagon." If he doesn't, according to Hersh, "this stuff is going to be the ruin of his presidency."