Paul Farhi follows up Foreign Policy’s reporting on some eyebrow-raising comments in a speech that Seymour Hersh gave at George Washington University’s campus in Qatar, and founds that, by and large, Hersh stands by them.



Hersh alleged that retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal and other senior offers in the Joint Special Operations Command are members or supporters of Catholic organizations like Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta, and that some military members see themselves on a “crusade” against Muslims. He also said that neoconservative advisors to President George W. Bush approached the Middle East with the attitude that “we’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals.”

A spokesman for Gen. McChrystal denied that the general was or has ever been a member of the Knights of Malta, and Pentagon sources told Farhi that, while there had been a few incidents of proselytizing, there was little evidence of a broad fundamentalism movement within the military.

Hersh said the speech was a “rumination” and that he hadn’t said the whole war was waged as a crusade, but that some leaders of the Special Forces have come to see it that way.

“I’m comfortable with the idea that there is a great deal of fundamentalism in JSOC,” Hersh told Farhi. “There is an incredible straing of Christian fundamentalism, not just Catholic, that’s part of the military.”

He said he couldn’t go much further into his specific comments because he’s writing a book about President George W. Bush’s band of neoconservatives foreign policy advisors.