>>
>> HITCHENS: Of Bob Kerrey? Well, he's my president, in fact,
>> since I teach at the New School, and I think he wouldn't --
>> he wouldn't have made that bad a president. I know him
>> slightly. I like him very much. I -- I think he probably
>> would have done well to decide whether he was going to all
>> three things, and there's a little confusion.
>>
>> But look, none of the people he killed were raped. None of
>> them were dismembered. None of them were tortured. None of
>> them were mutilated, had their ears cut off. He never
>> referred to them as gooks or slopes or afterwards. So it --
>> con -- for one day's work in a free-fire zone in the Mekong....
>
>Can anyone parse this? Is this some sort of irony?
>
>Doug
It both is and is not ironic. The thing reeks of dread amusement. Hitchens is sneering at liberals for wanting to hold soldiers responsible for the practice of war, for wanting to hold them to standards of squeamish civility (which, he says ironically, would put withholding the use of torture on an equal footing with the use of correct language). At the same time he's is making the point that, according to the rules he was operating under, Kerry acted honourably, and it's the appallingness of that fact which brings out the final grim smirk: "for one day's work in a free-fire zone in the Mekong..."
Aside from that, taken as a whole, this is a "Cop that, you wankers" to an audience that is looking for answers from Hitchens.
Joanna
www.overlookhouse.com