Hersh: Bush: When Even the Good News is Bad: "Hersh's message is simple and frightening: '(George W.) Bush is an ideologue, a Utopian,' Hersh said. 'He wants to clean out the Middle East and install democracy. He doesn't care how many body bags come back home. There's nothing more dangerous than an ideologue who is completely bonkers and no one is going to tell him.'

"Bush is committed to perpetual war, Hersh said. 'He risked his presidency on this war,' Hersh said. 'He could have gotten more votes if he backed off. But he insisted he hasn't made any mistakes.' Hersh has talked privately with many in the military and CIA, including some who have recently resigned. All told him that if the Iraq war had gone 'right' - say, if the Americans had been greeted as liberators - our military would have marched 'right and left' - to Syria and Iran.

"Oil is a big factor in this war, Hersh said, and so is Israel, but to Bush it's about ideology: 'Whether this man communicates with God, or is on a crusade, or really is a neo-con, or if he thought that his father's not taking Baghdad was a mistake - in any case, I think he is absolutely committed to staying in Iraq to the end.'

"After 9/11, Hersh said, America had some good choices. 'Early in 2002, the Taliban was split,' Hersh said. 'About 50 percent of the Taliban leadership hated Osama bin Laden and wanted him out. We could have worked with them. But we went ahead and treated the Taliban as one entity. The Taliban has survived. Al Queda has survived. We wanted to eliminate crazy people who want to fly planes into buildings. But instead we dehumanized everyone in Afghanistan and Iraq.'"

"Bush is told only what he wants to hear, and since he doesn't read newspapers, he has become completely divorced from reality.... We cannot win in Iraq, Hersh said. "We have no intel. We can't find the insurgents. When they bomb something, we only know about it afterward. We can't figure them out. Someone said, 'We play chess, they play Go.' All we can do is lose. All we can do is bomb."

"The United States cannot afford this endless war, Hersh said. The dollar is already falling against the Euro, and the Chinese and Japanese hold trillions of dollars of U.S. debt.

"Soon China and Russia will start buying oil in Euros," Hersh said. "They'll stop buying American in Europe because they hate us so much - Disney in Paris is already going down. Large American corporations doing business abroad are going down. We could see more anti-American violence abroad. The dollar will fall. Billionaires are now telling other billionaires to get out of the stock market and buy foreign currency and stocks.""

Hersh: Bush: When Even the Good News is Bad: "Hersh's message is simple and frightening: '(George W.) Bush is an ideologue, a Utopian,' Hersh said. 'He wants to clean out the Middle East and install democracy. He doesn't care how many body bags come back home. There's nothing more dangerous than an ideologue who is completely bonkers and no one is going to tell him.'

"Bush is committed to perpetual war, Hersh said. 'He risked his presidency on this war,' Hersh said. 'He could have gotten more votes if he backed off. But he insisted he hasn't made any mistakes.' Hersh has talked privately with many in the military and CIA, including some who have recently resigned. All told him that if the Iraq war had gone 'right' - say, if the Americans had been greeted as liberators - our military would have marched 'right and left' - to Syria and Iran.

"Oil is a big factor in this war, Hersh said, and so is Israel, but to Bush it's about ideology: 'Whether this man communicates with God, or is on a crusade, or really is a neo-con, or if he thought that his father's not taking Baghdad was a mistake - in any case, I think he is absolutely committed to staying in Iraq to the end.'

"After 9/11, Hersh said, America had some good choices. 'Early in 2002, the Taliban was split,' Hersh said. 'About 50 percent of the Taliban leadership hated Osama bin Laden and wanted him out. We could have worked with them. But we went ahead and treated the Taliban as one entity. The Taliban has survived. Al Queda has survived. We wanted to eliminate crazy people who want to fly planes into buildings. But instead we dehumanized everyone in Afghanistan and Iraq.'"

"Bush is told only what he wants to hear, and since he doesn't read newspapers, he has become completely divorced from reality.... We cannot win in Iraq, Hersh said. "We have no intel. We can't find the insurgents. When they bomb something, we only know about it afterward. We can't figure them out. Someone said, 'We play chess, they play Go.' All we can do is lose. All we can do is bomb."

"The United States cannot afford this endless war, Hersh said. The dollar is already falling against the Euro, and the Chinese and Japanese hold trillions of dollars of U.S. debt.

"Soon China and Russia will start buying oil in Euros," Hersh said. "They'll stop buying American in Europe because they hate us so much - Disney in Paris is already going down. Large American corporations doing business abroad are going down. We could see more anti-American violence abroad. The dollar will fall. Billionaires are now telling other billionaires to get out of the stock market and buy foreign currency and stocks.""