Commanders Expect A 'Significant' U.S. Presence In Afghanistan For 8 To 10 More Years: Dem Rep

"US foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconserv­ative "crusaders­" in the former vice president'­s office and now in the special operations community.­"
 
"What I'm really talking about is how eight or nine neoconserv­ative, radicals* if you will, overthrew the American government­. Took it over," he said of his forthcomin­g book. "It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeare­d, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced­."
 
"Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. "In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What's this? What are they all worried about, the politician­s and the press, they're all worried about some looting? ... Don't they get it? We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals­. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.'"
 
"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."
 
"Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organizati­on commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,­" according to its website."
 
"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.­"

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