Hersh, the greatest investigative reporter in the history of this country.

[dArKeR]

ALTERMAN: THE GREATEST, EVER
Sy Hersh is, as far as I can tell, the greatest investigative reporter in the history of this country.

The Greatest, Ever:  I am going to have to call Sy Hersh and apologize when "When Preisdents Lie" comes out in September (and he is going to growl back at me on the phone), because he wrote an essay in a small Jewish magazine called OLAM which, unfortunately, illustrated some points I needed illustrated about how naïve even someone like Hersh could be when it came to the honesty-level of past presidents, like Truman and FDR.  So I’m happy for the opportunity in this piece to call him “no question, … the most important reporter in America since 9/11.”  I’d go quite a bit further.  Hersh is, as far as I can tell, the greatest investigative reporter in the history of this country; perhaps in the history of any country, though I’m not qualified to say that.

Here is his latest, which, because it was released to the media and on the New Yorker’s Web site on Saturday, determined the tenor of Sunday’s Bigfoot press coverage.  What would we do without him?  And thank goodness the New Yorker has given him the space and support he needs to do his best work, ever.

Hersh is the greatest, no doubt, but that is not the same thing as saying there is no good investigative reporting out there.  Last week, Yochi J. Dreazen and Christopher Cooper of the Wall Street Journal published a terrific article demonstrating that the June 30 deadline for the alleged hand-over of power to the Iraqis is essentially a hoax.  The article, entitled “Behind the Scenes, U.S. Tightens Grip on Iraq’s Future; Hand-Picked Proxies, Advisers Will be Given Key Roles in Interim Government,” has received almost no attention anywhere, despite its having been published on the front-page of the Journal—and does not appear to be posted online, even for subscribers. 

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

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1. Hersh is a great American

The best.

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2. Behind the Scenes, U.S. Tightens Grip On Iraq's Future - WSJ via Indy

by Wall Street Journal • Saturday May 15, 2004 at 07:25 AM

Or 'How Iraq Came To Be Ruled By A Brutal Dictator The First Time Around'.

Behind the Scenes, U.S. Tightens Grip On Iraq's Future

Hand-Picked Proxies, Advisers Will Be Given Key Roles In Interim Government
Facing Friction Over the Army
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN and CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 13, 2004; Page A1

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Haider al-Abadi runs Iraq's Ministry of Communications, but he no longer calls the shots there.

Instead, the authority to license Iraq's television stations, sanction newspapers and regulate cellphone companies was recently transferred to a commission whose members were selected by Washington. The commissioners' five-year terms stretch far beyond the planned 18-month tenure of the interim Iraqi government that will assume sovereignty on June 30.

The transfer surprised Mr. Abadi, a British-trained engineer who spent nearly two decades in exile before returning to Iraq last year. He found out the commission had been formally signed into law only when a reporter asked him for comment about it. "No one from the U.S. even found time to call and tell me themselves," he says.

As Washington prepares to hand over power, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and other officials are quietly building institutions that will give the U.S. powerful levers for influencing nearly every important decision the interim government will make.

In a series of edicts issued earlier this spring, Mr. Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority created new commissions that effectively take away virtually all of the powers once held by several ministries. The CPA also established an important new security-adviser position, which will be in charge of training and organizing Iraq's new army and paramilitary forces, and put in place a pair of watchdog institutions that will serve as checks on individual ministries and allow for continued U.S. oversight. Meanwhile, the CPA reiterated that coalition advisers will remain in virtually all remaining ministries after the handover.

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/05/135543.php