[snarks_when_bored]

Well said, Mr. Hitchens.

[Critical Bill]

Big PING for later reading. This guy is great.

[an italian]

I'm REALLY proud my Country stands next to you in Iraq.

[Syberyenta]

Thanks. This is a great piece.

[heckler]

For later reading. Must work. Baby needs new shoes.

[AliVeritas]

Hitch ping

[BunnySlippers]

Bookmarking

[Peach]

I am sitting here stunned. This is not an easy article to read, but it is a fantastic article and explains what for me has always been unexplainable. Why the president does not more clearly lay out the facts about the Iraq/AQ connections.

[conservativecorner]

Mr. Hitchens opens up a giant can of whoop ass BUMP!!

[johnny7]

“(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.”

This should be higher on Hitchens list. As in all wars, there is no substitute for the knowledge you gain of your enemy as when locked in combat.

Without the lessons & intelligence gleaned from Afghanistan and Iraq... we would be no more aware of the Islamo-fascist mind than we were on 9/12/2001.

[Uncle Ike]

" Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, either. "

The entire "lessons learned" history of the 20th Century in two simple sentences.

What else really needs to be said?

[conservativecorner]

(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.

This goes unreported and unremembered, but it is as big as any other on his list.

[cake_crumb]

"Well said, Mr. Hitchens."

Though I disagree on the wisdom of arming why Arab who showed up claiming to be an "ethnic Albanian" in Bosnia and the subsequent, US/British led victory for al Qaeda and "Greater Albania" (still no mass graves over there and our troops are STILL not home) it was otherwise well said.

In defense of the Bush administration and DoD though, I need to point out that some administration and military officials HAVE been telling the blunt truth all along. The media does not report these statements, because they don't fit the Quagmire status quo.

For example: In answer to the zillionth's question about how many American troops must die and Iraq's readiness to take over it's own security so we can leave, Col. Myers pointed out at over 2000 Iraqis have been killed by "insurgents" - in other words, more Iraqis have died defending their country from terrorists than have American troops. No mention was made anywhere in the media that I found.

This leads me to a pet peeve: the administration's capitulation on the term "insurgent". The definition of "insurgent" is someone who is fighting the government of THEIR OWN COUNTRY. Some of the terrorists in Iraq killing Iraqis and coalition troops are Iraqis, but most are from Iran, Syria, Saudi, Egypt, Pakistan, the PA territories etc. They are NOT "insurgents" they are INVADORS. In fact, though some locals joined forces with the foreigners, only a few targets have been officials of the new government. The rest have been local police and civilians.

People might argue that we invaded first. Yes, we did. The fact NOW is that the bulk of the Iraqi people want us to stay. One poll showed that 2/3 of the people of Baghdad want our troops to stay until the security situation is cleared up.

The whole administration needs to stand firm against the redefinition of "insurgent" by the left because it implies that the Iraqi people are the ones killing their countrymen and coalition troops, which creates public confusion about whether we're winning, whether we should pull our and whether this is The Next Viet Nam.

[mo]

IMHO, the real enemy is within...as with Vietnam defeat can only be engineered from our end. We all discuss Muslim threats within our borders....yet these pale against the anger of the Western Liberal toward Western thought and achievement. The best way to think of the Western Liberal mind as that of the Muslim radical, the Stalinist, the Pol Pot apologist camouflaged by the Ivy League, the country club and the BMW -to seem as just another neighbor with an opinion. Such camouflaged evil in the long run is FAR more effective towards its ends than the caricatures we all recognize and acknowledge on the TV. The Muslim issue will not be successfully put to rest until the West first deals with its own great Satan within.

[FederalistPhred]

Why have so many people failed to point out that Iraq was known to have WMD's, namely the chemical weapons which they used against the Iranians and Kurds?

During the runup to the two Gulf Wars everyone, whether they were "for" or "against" war with Iraq, took for granted that Iraq had chemical weapons, and perhaps worse. Some opponents of Gulf War I gave this as a reason to oppose invasion. I wonder how many of these people are now crowing that Bush "lied" about WMD's.

[meema]

No one puts it better than Hitch! Good catch, snarks.

[Fred Nerks]

Brilliant Hitchens, thanks for posting snarks. Don't miss this guys and girls.

[1rudeboy]

bttt
great with coffee

[Alia]

Childishness is one thing--those of us who grew up on this wonderful Edwardian author were always happy to see the grown-ups and governesses discomfited. But puerility in adults is quite another thing, and considerably less charming. "You said there were WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire." I have had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to intone the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus, the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million bribe in a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching examples would by no means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver. Yes, it must be admitted that Bush and Blair made a hash of a good case, largely because they preferred to scare people rather than enlighten them or reason with them. Still, the only real strategy of deception has come from those who believe, or pretend, that Saddam Hussein was no problem.

Bang! BTTT.

[BunnySlippers]

The only speech by any statesman that can bear reprinting from that low, dishonest decade came from Tony Blair when he spoke in Chicago in 1999.

In fact, Blair made the most moving impassioned speech after the bombing of the World Trade Center for which I will always remember.

[atomicpossum]

Is this the same Hitchens that only a few years ago seemed to be writing unfocussed screeds while under the influence? Has he straightened himself up, or is he just on the money when it comes to the WOT? Either way, sharp article. No artcles from the anti-war crowd can match this and others for intellectual weight.