He stands by them because they weren't bogus. Two tons of refined uranium and 500 tons of yellowcake brought back from Iraq say so. That was always the only WMD that really counted.
Hitchens is a fascinating case of what happens when an intelligent man measures his ideals against the policies of a group of people who ostensibly share them but end up working against them. It is no accident that he admires Orwell.
A good friend of his, Martin Amis, wrote a letter to Hitchens that appears in Amis's Koba The Dread - Laughter And The 20 Million, one of the most brilliant studies of Stalin in recent years, and a book I highly recommend. Amis thinks that Hitchens' transition is still incomplete, and I agree. But a relentless search for a truth that no honest person can dismiss will get him there. What most offends Hitchens about is erstwhile political soulmates is precisely that convenient denial of truth where it suits them, an activity that he can no longer tolerate. It is the sort of dishonesty that equates Bush with the Taliban because it must, and in doing so loses what Hitchens refuses to give up - his soul.
I enjoy reading Hitchens, even when he lapses back into his old leftie ways, but the author of this "interview" is obviously a brain-dead commie rat.
Really? Where? Show me. They seem to extremely well hidden if they exist. I certainly haven't seen them. PLEASE point them out to me.