$400 million for the collapsing Iran scenario?

Sy Hersh follows the trail.

This adds cred to what Tom B, Bill L, and I have been saying:

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.”

Comments

[zenpundit]

While I put Hersh in the same general reliability category as Yossef Bodansky - these guys give you literary equivalents of raw files - I have to say that Gates may be the best and most straight-shooting DefSec since Henry Stimson, our last Sec. of War, who openly called out FDR for lying to him.

[John Robb]

Z,

Right about Gates.

You are also exactly right about Sy Hersh. He is the equivalent of raw files, and he can dig up some great stuff.