Post by RPankn on May 6, 2004 5:07:20 GMT -5
Transcript of Sy Hersch on last night's O'Reilly Factor
Inside Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
This is a partial transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," May 3, 2004 that has been edited for clarity.
Watch The O'Reilly Factor weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET and listen to the Radio Factor!
BILL O'REILLY HOST: Continuing now with our top story tonight, the repercussions of the Iraq torture situation.
Joining us from Washington is investigative reporter Seymour Hersh (search), who became famous during the Vietnam war; you may remember his expose of the My Lai (search) atrocities. He has written a major article about the Iraq torture situation in this week's issue of "The New Yorker (search) magazine."
All right, you just heard General Karpinski. Do you believe what she is saying?
SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": Well, I could just tell you what Gen Antonio Taguba (search) said in his report, which is complicated because he said basically among other things she ran one of the worst brigades he's ever seen. People didn't salute, people dressed casually. Officers were moved around without orders. They didn't keep records. They -- she said that this was not a prison full of hardened, you know, soldiers caught in war. These are full of civilians.
He said upwards of 60 percent of the people in the prison had nothing to do with, no bad feelings toward America whatsoever. They simply were caught in a random roadside check or they were snatched off the street. They should have been processed under the Geneva Convention (search). -- Taguba said they should have been processed. We should have gotten rid of the good guys from the bad guys. There was no control, no paperwork. They had all sorts of problems that she would -- he really gave her .
O'REILLY: All right. But there's a difference between being a poor administrator, as this -- your -- and knowing about torture and looking the other way.
Now, I grant you and I challenged the general. I said look, in these pictures, these soldiers didn't look like they had any fear of anybody coming down on them. I mean, they looked like they were having a rollicking good time. And that tells me there was a problem in management, whether it's middle management or upper management, I don't know.
Now I also know that the general, as you do, was not a trained jail warden. She's a reservist and got thrown in there into this position. But I think for the country's sake, we need to know if this scandal is going to get any worse because we're taking a beating worldwide, And if so, who is the evildoer here?
HERSH: First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.
O'REILLY: All right. So we're going to see in the weeks to come more pictures and videotapes of atrocities against Iraqis? Is that what we can look forward to seeing?
HERSH: Mr. O'Reilly, this is a generation -- you know back -- you and I in our days, if we had something, you know, we came back from war. We would take our pictures and hide them behind the socks in the drawer and look at them once in a while.
This is a generation that sends stuff on CDs, sends it around. Some kid right now is negotiating with some European magazine. -- You know, I can't say that for sure, but it's there. -- It's out there. And the Army knows it.
O'REILLY: Boy.
HERSH: They have tried to recover some of the CD discs from computers, individual computers. But obviously, you can't stop this...
O'REILLY: All right. Well, the damage to the country obviously is just immeasurable. But reading your article in "The New Yorker." I just get the feeling that the Army, when they heard about it, started action almost immediately. It wasn't a cover-up situation. Or did I read your article wrong?
HERSH: This guy Taguba is brilliant. He could have made a living doing -- it's a credit to the Army that somebody with that kind of integrity would write this kind of -- it's 53-page report.
O'REILLY: OK, but Sanchez the commander put him in charge fairly quickly. They mobilized fairly quickly.
HERSH: No, look, I don't want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.
One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it's very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.
O'REILLY: All right. We'll have more with Seymour Hersh in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[Continued in next post]
Inside Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
This is a partial transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," May 3, 2004 that has been edited for clarity.
Watch The O'Reilly Factor weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET and listen to the Radio Factor!
BILL O'REILLY HOST: Continuing now with our top story tonight, the repercussions of the Iraq torture situation.
Joining us from Washington is investigative reporter Seymour Hersh (search), who became famous during the Vietnam war; you may remember his expose of the My Lai (search) atrocities. He has written a major article about the Iraq torture situation in this week's issue of "The New Yorker (search) magazine."
All right, you just heard General Karpinski. Do you believe what she is saying?
SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": Well, I could just tell you what Gen Antonio Taguba (search) said in his report, which is complicated because he said basically among other things she ran one of the worst brigades he's ever seen. People didn't salute, people dressed casually. Officers were moved around without orders. They didn't keep records. They -- she said that this was not a prison full of hardened, you know, soldiers caught in war. These are full of civilians.
He said upwards of 60 percent of the people in the prison had nothing to do with, no bad feelings toward America whatsoever. They simply were caught in a random roadside check or they were snatched off the street. They should have been processed under the Geneva Convention (search). -- Taguba said they should have been processed. We should have gotten rid of the good guys from the bad guys. There was no control, no paperwork. They had all sorts of problems that she would -- he really gave her .
O'REILLY: All right. But there's a difference between being a poor administrator, as this -- your -- and knowing about torture and looking the other way.
Now, I grant you and I challenged the general. I said look, in these pictures, these soldiers didn't look like they had any fear of anybody coming down on them. I mean, they looked like they were having a rollicking good time. And that tells me there was a problem in management, whether it's middle management or upper management, I don't know.
Now I also know that the general, as you do, was not a trained jail warden. She's a reservist and got thrown in there into this position. But I think for the country's sake, we need to know if this scandal is going to get any worse because we're taking a beating worldwide, And if so, who is the evildoer here?
HERSH: First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.
O'REILLY: All right. So we're going to see in the weeks to come more pictures and videotapes of atrocities against Iraqis? Is that what we can look forward to seeing?
HERSH: Mr. O'Reilly, this is a generation -- you know back -- you and I in our days, if we had something, you know, we came back from war. We would take our pictures and hide them behind the socks in the drawer and look at them once in a while.
This is a generation that sends stuff on CDs, sends it around. Some kid right now is negotiating with some European magazine. -- You know, I can't say that for sure, but it's there. -- It's out there. And the Army knows it.
O'REILLY: Boy.
HERSH: They have tried to recover some of the CD discs from computers, individual computers. But obviously, you can't stop this...
O'REILLY: All right. Well, the damage to the country obviously is just immeasurable. But reading your article in "The New Yorker." I just get the feeling that the Army, when they heard about it, started action almost immediately. It wasn't a cover-up situation. Or did I read your article wrong?
HERSH: This guy Taguba is brilliant. He could have made a living doing -- it's a credit to the Army that somebody with that kind of integrity would write this kind of -- it's 53-page report.
O'REILLY: OK, but Sanchez the commander put him in charge fairly quickly. They mobilized fairly quickly.
HERSH: No, look, I don't want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.
One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it's very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.
O'REILLY: All right. We'll have more with Seymour Hersh in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[Continued in next post]
