Sy Hersh Disappointed Obama Isn't an 'Angry Black Man'

Liberal journalist Seymour Hersh unleashed on President Obama in a speech in Qatar on Monday, voicing his extreme disappointment with his foreign policy: "Just when we needed an angry black man, we didn't get one." Hersh also revealed his Dan Brown-style conspiracy theory about how "neo-conservative radicals" in the military's special operations community "overthrew the American government."

Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy magazine reported on Tuesday that the writer for the New Yorker, whose last conspiracy theory from 2009 also involved bizarre allegations against the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA, gave a speech at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service's branch campus in Doha that was "billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras." Hounshell recounted how Hersh "delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe...expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy."

After reproducing the journalist's "angry black man" quote, he continued that the speech "quickly went downhill from there." The Foreign Policy managing editor then depicted how far "downhill" Hersh went:

[Hersh] also charged that U.S. 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."

Maybe Hersh can sell the movie rights of his upcoming book to Sony so Tom Hanks can bust this latest global conspiracy.

[H/t: Carl Olson at Ignatius Insight.]