I was able to time my visit back to Hampshire so as to see Seymour Hersh's lecture yesterday afternoon. Somebody over as Daily Kos has posted a great diary entry summarizing the speech, which is worth checking out (Hampsters: check the comments for misc. Valley gossip).
As I said to several people afterwards, Hersh didn't say very many things that I didn't already know. But he put them together with such conviction and urgency that the cumulative effect was something of a punch to the gut. In particular, his repeated insistence that there was no conceivable scenario in which the Bush administration changes course on its own.
At the outset of the campaign, there were smart people speculating that Bush (or, more precisely, Rove) would begin to move towards claiming victory and planning for a major troop pullout. Based on the polls, that would've been the smart thing to do; I think he would've won with a much healthier margin.
But clearly that didn't happen, and Hersh's central point -- that Bush has an irrational and steadfast commitment to this crusade -- now seems to be dead-on. Even more disturbingly, he argued that the only scenario for a serious course correction involves some combination of European intervention and American macroeconomic catastrophe.
Not a pleasant thought.
Posted by Michael at November 19, 2004 12:18 PM | TrackBack