AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New Yorker, also helped to expose the torture at Abu Ghraib in April of 2004. The issue of the generals not speaking out, how unusual is this? I mean, would anyone expect it in any administration?

SEYMOUR HERSH: No, you know, really that's – you know, that's what we're here for. We have a congress that on any given day, you know, as I always joke, is -- I can't tell whether they're supine or prone, but they're down. You've got a dead congress that can barely move. I mean, the fear, you know, the thunderous noise of the Democrats running away from Murtha. Murtha makes this statement, and all that the Democrats do is left in the party, couldn't run away fast enough from this man. He was left alone there. Even Nancy Pelosi, nobody supported him when he called for an immediate withdrawal.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is actually astounding. And then the Republicans coming forward and saying, ‘Okay, we're going to put foward this proposal,’ and it's – what? – 403 to 3. Jose Serrano, Cynthia McKinney. Now, what was wrong with the proposal, just saying withdraw immediately?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, actually, what he was saying, six months. And I would guess that if you really pushed him hard, his argument would be that once we withdraw, if -- I think every week it gets harder and harder to do this -- once you withdraw, the first thing the insurgency, the Sunnis and Baathists, would do would be to turn on the jihadists -- there's no love between them -- you know, and immediately push them out of the picture and then begin to try and get some political stake and begin to talk with the other people, the Shia and the secular, you know, Iraq. Even Shia Iraq, more Shia are secular than religious. Most people don’t know that. There's many tremendous divisions inside Iraq among the Shia.

And so, a year ago, it seemed to me, the -- a year ago -- Amy, it's so crazy, because we always repeat history. In 1965, if anybody in the Democratic Party -- Bobby Kennedy once tried to tentatively suggest that the way out of the Vietnam War was talk to the North Vietnamese. You would have been laughed out of the ballpark. We don't talk to the guys we're fighting the war with. And so, clearly the way out was to talk to the Sunni and Baathist leadership. Clearly, they're organized fairly well. Obviously this insurgency is extremely well done. They've gotten, if anything, more sophisticated.

If you remember, this summer, General Casey, alas, said that the Iraqi -- the insurgency is defeated now; they're only hitting soft targets, that is, civilians. And the next thing you know, we have a hundred deaths of American soldiers in a month. I mean, that's clearly not true. They clearly can do what they want. My own guess is, and I’m told this by my friends on the inside, there's tremendous intelligence. And the Israelis, among other people, are warning us that this wonderful Green Zone that we think is such an oasis could be hit any time. They're clearly able to penetrate into that. And so, it's all up for grabs. Why not talk to them? Now, it's probably too late. I don't know what we can do to salvage the situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, you also write about President Bush and how his closest advisors have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official who served in Bush's first term spoke extensively about the connection between the President's religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. Can you elaborate on this?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, it's interesting about this particular person and others with whom -- all of a sudden -- it's weird, but in the last -- people that I've been talking to for years never discuss this. All of a sudden, within the last month or so, somebody, just in the middle of a conversation about somebody else, began to talk about how the President viewed 9/11 as a challenge and sort of as a divine challenge, and the election in 2002 he saw as a sign from God, a reaffirmation. If you remember, the Republicans did very well in the off-year congressional election. And then, of course, in 2004, this president ran, didn't give one inch up on the Iraqi war, did not back off an inch and won, another sign of guidance. And so this person was saying -- I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's certainly what this person saw and heard, but I don't know what's in the President's mind. He's also committed to democracy.

But what's happening now is, I think, because he's so unreachable by common -- I think one reason the generals went to Murtha is you can't tell this to the President. I think people -- I don't want to use – I’ll just use the word, I think they're scared to death. I think some of the insiders are really scared to death that you have a president that's presiding over -- it's -- the exit plan for this war is totally dependant on the Iraqi military, which is comical. It's driven by militias. I don't know, many in your audience have probably read the wonderful Jim Fallows article in the Atlantic, which I thought was quite explicit about how bad it is. And also, nobody even mentions the Iraqi police. They're completely destroyed and useless and demoralized. So the idea that withdrawal is going to be dependant on the Iraqi police and the military is a fantasy.

And so, what are we -- we're going to leave and increase the bombing and the Iraqis eventually -- this is what's driving the Air Force crazy is I wrote about the Iraqis will be responsible for targeting? You know, who's going to hit what? I've actually had senior intelligence people say to me that means Iran will be targeting our bombers. I mean, it’s just loony. It's a loony formula.

AMY GOODMAN: Last question, and that has to do with your last section of your piece on this composite American Special Forces team, known as the S.M.U., special mission unit, in Syria.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, there's more than one. There's many of them. You know, there's more than a handful of these units. Some are in Syria, some are other places. These are combined teams that have been set up, so not any one service isn’t involved. And I think, you know, obviously we think that this government believes that when it comes to a high-value target, you know, a potential al-Qaeda or believed al-Qaeda target, we can do anything we want anywhere in the world. And the world's our playpen. And I can tell you right now, inside the American intelligence community, and I’m talking about high up in the community, there's a great deal of concern about these kind of operations, because our troop go in and do what they do to people they think are Iraqis -- I mean, al-Qaeda. And it's very rough. And they don't clear it with either the State Department or the ambassador in the country or the C.I.A. chief of station. It's a formula for chaos. And it's going on now. And it's been going on for quite a while, many months. And it's a new sort of step-up in the war. And Congress? Do they want to know? I don't think so.

AMY GOODMAN: And the S.M.U.s, where else are they? The special mission units?

SEYMOUR HERSH: In places where we think there's – you know, certainly in Iraq, and other places in the world where we think they can do some good.

AMY GOODMAN: By the way, do you believe that the secret prisons are in Romania and Poland, as Human Rights Watch believes, that the Washington Post won't name, but exposed?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, Amy, I’m actually doing some more work on it. But I will tell you this, the C.I.A. prisons are there. There have been prisons, the C.I.A. has run prisons for many, many years around the world. And I’m sure terrible things happen. But that's actually not where the real game is. They're somewhere else.

AMY GOODMAN: Where?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Other places. I’m -- let me do my reporting, and I promise I’ll publish it, and I promise I’ll come and talk to you about it.

AMY GOODMAN: Okay, well, Seymour Hersh, I want to thank you for being with us. His latest piece is in The New Yorker magazine; it is called "Up in the Air: Where is the Iraq War Headed Next?" Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, thanks for being with us.

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