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.
Your are correct. What Hitchens seems to say is that the Admin needs compensate for the very anti-American leftist press and push to the front the points he made. I agree the Admin has stated the truth but not in a way that can get around the anti-Bush press.