In a stirring effort to retake the title of Craziest American from Jared Loughner, Seymour Hersh last week had this to say to an audience in Qatar:
"That's the attitude," he continued. "We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command."
He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."
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"Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."
"They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”"
Crusader coins. What he's probably talking about are challenge coins(or commander's coins) and while it's entirely possible that some moron had something made with "crusade" on it, my bet is that getting caught with something like that in Iraq or Afghanistan would not be a career enhancing move.
As for McChrystal, his spokesman issued the following:
“The allegations recently made by Seymour Hersh relating to General McChrystal’s involvement with an organization called The Knights of Malta are completely false and without basis in fact,” Bolger said in an e-mail. “General McChrystal is not and has never been a member of that organization.”
Even if he was a member, it's not the 13th century and they are no longer actual knights. Just in case anyone needed that cleared up.
As far as evidence goes, Hersh does not present any:
Hersh told Stars and Stripes he has proof to back up his claims but he declined to provide any because he is writing a book that will touch on the subject and revealing his evidence before the book is published would be “unethical.”
Uh huh. The more likely problem is that nobody has built the device that is capable of recording the voices in his head.
Wow.
Oh, and I forgot two other points I wanted to make. First of all, if we want to talk about careless speech that has the potential to incite violence, perhaps as exhibit A we can have the example of going to a Muslim nation and proclaiming that the U.S. is on a "crusade."
Secondly, Hersh was speaking at a branch campus of Georgetown University which, last time I checked, was still a Catholic institution. Is anybody paying attention over there? Hello?
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