This is scary, I just hope Tony Blair hasn't also had a religious epiphany too.

CNN interview "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer", Aired November 27, 2005, with New Yorker Magazine writer and Pulitzer Prize Winner "Seymour Hersh".

BLITZER: In this new article you have in the New Yorker, you also write this about the president:
"The president is more determined than ever to stay the course," the former defense official said. "He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, "People may suffer and die, but the Church advances", He said that the president had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. "They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway, "the former defense official said."

HERSH: Suffice it to say this, that this president in private, at Camp David with his friends, the people that I'm sure call him George, is very serene about the war. He's upbeat. He thinks that he's going to be judged, maybe not in five years or ten years, maybe in 20 years. He's committed to the course. He believes in democracy. He believes that he's doing the right thing, and he's not going to stop until he get's -- either until he's out of office, or he falls apart, or he wins.

BLITZER: But this has become, your suggesting, a religious thing for him?

HERSH: Some people think it is. Other people think he's absolutely committed, as I say, to the idea of democracy. He's been sold on this notion.
He's a utopian, you could say, in a world where maybe he doesn't have all the facts and all the information he needs and isn't able to change.

I'll tell you, the people that talk to me now are essentially frightened because they're not sure how you get to this guy.
We have generals that do not like -- anymore -- they're worried about speaking truth to power. You know that. I mean that's -- Murtha in fact, John Murtha, the congressman from Pennsylvania, which most people don't know, has tremendous contacts with the senior generals of the armies. He's a ranking old war horse in Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The generals know him and like him. His message to the White House was much more worrisome than maybe to the average person in the public. They know that generals are privately telling him things that they're not saying to them.
And if you're a general and you have a disagreement with this war, you cannot get that message into the White House. And that gets people unnerved.

BLITZER: Here's what you write. You write,

"current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding."

Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically doesn't want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.

HERSH: You know, Wolf there is people I've been talking to -- I've been a critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are suddenly saying something much more alarming.
They're beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four, years ago.
I don't want to sound like I'm off the wall here. But the issue is, is this president going to be capable of responding to reality? Is he going to be able -- is he going to be capable if he is going to get a bad assessment, is he going to accept it as a bad assessment or is he simply going to see it as something else that is just a little bit in the way as he marches on in his crusade that may not be judged for 10 or 20 years.

He talks about being judged in 20 years to his friends. And so it's a little alarming because that means that my and my colleagues in the press corps, we can't get to him maybe with our views. You and you can't get to him maybe with your interviews.
How do you get to a guy to convince him that perhaps he's not going the right way?
Jack Murtha certainly didn't do it. As I wrote, they were enraged at Murtha in the White House.

And so we have an election coming up -- Yes. I've had people talk to me about maybe Congress is going to have to cut off the budget for this war if it gets to that point. I don't think they're ready to do it now.

But I'm talking about sort of a crisis of management. That you have a management that's seen by some of the people closely involved as not being able to function in terms of getting information it doesn't want to receive.

"Holy Mierda"!! I just thought I might share this and hope it doesn't cause you any sleepless nights.
Peace

Sorry if I rushed you yesterday DD, I just felt that the topic of our president not listening to anyone except the advisors who give him the info he wants to hear is a scary thing, if that's the case. If you want to click me back in the alley still, go ahead and I'll wait for your topic to run it's course

Fulano,

I've got to admit that my short attention span didn't allow me to finish this article. But if the gist of the story is that President Bush isn't listening to our media, more power to him.

Gazpacho, If it were only true that he isn't listening to the media I would have no problem. But if it's true that he isn't listening to anyone who might have another opinion like the generals in charge of the Iraq War, CIA, or any other intelligence agency that might have a more negative or alternative view of what's going on or will happen.
If he's being kept in some kind of solitary or isolated position by his so called close knit core of "politico's" then that is a frightening scenario.

Here, here.

Fulano: In spite of the war in Iraq, things are on a rather even keel. The economy is in solid shape, things are starting to get turned around in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. So I would have my doubts that he is ignoring "all of his advisors" some of them I would agree, but not all of them. He is loosing support rather rapidly on Iraq, I for one feel that the time has come to reevaluated our position. The media has not given the bad press to Iraq that it did Viet Nam. They use to show the body bags and flag drapped caskets from VN, for some reason they have not seen fit to do that.

All of that aside I don't see where he is ignoring his advisors.

Desert Dweller,

I don't agree on the economy. It's not as good as they'd like to make us believe. The trade defecit is going up faster than it should, fossil fuel costs are adding costs to goods at an alarming rate that is creating short falls for senior citizens at a catastrophic rate, and we're still losing troops in Iraq, after Cheney made the grand announcement that we'd "broke the back" of the insurgency last January.

Pointing the finger at two hurricanes as being the chief cause of fossil fuel cost rises won't wash either, it's a product of selfish profit taking measures taken within the industry, while the administration has sat back and let it go unchecked, and still caters to these people by wanting to give them even more when it comes to oil exploration.

Its time that this stop. Its time that they realize they are either part of the solution, or part of the problem. At this point, they've become a major part of the problem. They've been granted monopoly status over the years, and that should change if they can't get their acts straight.

The article doesn't tell me Bush isn't listening to the media. It tells me that he isn't listening to key people in key roles of the military, and intelligence community, about what's happening. He's painted his own picture as to how it should be, and nothing that goes against that grain is permitted to be spoken of, or discussed, within the frame work of his administration.

This is not the time to support the man just because he's Republican. Its time that the man realize his obligation to the people of this country, and those whose lives he's causing, or allowing duress to surround.

He also better step back and refrain from making comments to the effect that; "God told him to invade Iraq." It isn't a holy war, and he isn't in shining armor on a horse.

Wolf

What's really depressing about the statements by Hersh concerning our so called leader is that most people probably agree or have a suspicion that there's truth in the fact that we basically have no real leadership in the white house.

All we get from Bush are soundbites, and his ridiculous road show at various military bases where he is staged, propped up and repeats the same speech over and over again with the stage set up like some kind of TV game show set.
I personally think that most people in the US are worried about what would happen if we got hit with a real disaster, terrorist or natural, the current administration has yet to show any leadership in crisis situations and thier power base is eroding like a sand castle on the beach at high tide.

I think the writer of the article and the poster have a problem with those that practice openly their religious beliefs. Frankly I would never want to see a President elected to the White House who did not believe in God and did not attend church regularly.

What next we cannot say Merry Christmas because you would be label as religious zealot.

Bill

Wow Bill,

That's it in a nutshell. I couldn't agree with you more. I don't mind a person disagreeing with someone's religion, but I know persecution when I see it.