Too High A Price

Today I ran across this:

"In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be 'cleared.' Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.

"'He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts,' Hersh said quietly. 'He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, "No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents."'"

This exerpt comes from the report of a speech given by Sy Hersh, the Pulitzer winning journalist who broke the story about the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam.

There are people on both sides of the political spectrum who are Sy Hersh's enemies because he doesn't pull punches. Corruption is corruption. Wrong is wrong. And murder is murder.

But this story has not gotten out. For one thing some sources are in Iraq and still in the military. He knows they are in danger telling a story like this to a reporter and he doesn't want to name them so they killed. One day they will testify and all the truth will come out.

Republicans said there was no torture in Abu Graib. Then then said there was torture but it was a mistake. Then they said it was the work of a few soldiers. Then it came out that torture has been a U.S. policy generated from the top rungs of government.

Republicans said the Koran was not defiled. Republicans lambasted Newsweek for airing the story. Yet the Pentagon now admits that Korans were defiled.

They will deny stories like this. One of the reasons they are trying to kill PBS is because PBS airs the truth.

Sy Hersh has never reported an untruth. He says there are truly good people inside government who are shocked and appalled by what is going on. This is an immoral war yet no amount of bodies or dead woman and children is too high a price for the 8 or 9 cultists running this ideological experiment who have gotten control of our country.

The question is: is it too high a price for the rest of us?