Paraphrasing Mencken (in this case quite appropriately) I have always considered Hitchens to be a liberal appreciably less jackassical than the norm of the species, and I delight in unearthing this fresh evidence of it:
http://www.slate.com/id/2192696/?from=rss - - - I used to watch this mooncalf blunder his way through press conferences and think, Exactly where do we find such men? For the job of swabbing out the White House stables, yes. But for any task involving the weighing of words? Hah! Now it seems that he realizes, and with a shock at that, that there was a certain amount of "spin" or propaganda involved in his job description. Well, give the man a cigar. ... For one thing, he doesn't supply anything that can really be called evidence. For another, having not noticed any "propaganda machine" at the time he was perspiring his way through his simple job, he has a clear mercenary interest in discovering one in retrospect. ... Feith was and is very much identified with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, and he certainly did not believe that Saddam Hussein was ever containable in a sanctions "box." But he is capable of separating his views from his narrative, and this absorbing account of the interdepartmental and ideological quarrels within the Bush administration, on the Afghanistan and Guantanamo fronts as well as about Iraq, will make it difficult if not impossible for people to go on claiming that, for instance: 1. There was no rational reason to suspect a continuing Iraqi WMD threat. Feith's citations from the Duelfer Report alone are stunning in their implications. 2. That alternatives to war were never discussed and that the administration was out to "get" Saddam Hussein from the start. 3. That the advocates of regime change hoped and indeed planned to anoint Ahmad Chalabi as a figurehead leader in Baghdad. 4. That there was no consideration given to postwar planning. It's also of considerable interest to learn that the main argument for adhering to the Geneva Conventions was made within the Pentagon and that the man who expressed the most prewar misgivings concerning Iraq was none other than Donald Rumsfeld. Feith doesn't deny that he has biases of his own. One of these concerns the widely circulated charge that his own Office of Special Plans was engaged in cherry-picking and stovepiping intelligence. Another is the criticism, made by most of the neocon faction, of Paul Bremer and the occupation regime that he ran in Baghdad. In all instances, however, Feith writes in an unrancorous manner and is careful to supply the evidence and the testimony and, where possible, the actual documentation, from all sides. - - - I profoundly disagree with many of his views (he's an old-time lefty, with rather simplistic and hostile views of religion--which is a double edged sword because it ironically puts him on the right side of the argument with respect to Islamic fascism) but I thoroughly enjoy reading them in print, because he's always honest about how he sees it no matter who gets pissed about it! He and, from the right, Mark Steyn, both engage, enlighten and entertain with words on a par all their own--at least among those who today pretend to practice the craft of writing op eds. - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
