I just saw Hitchens on Chris Matthew's Hardball show last night, pushing his Trial of Henry Kissinger book - a good book by the way. You should take a looksie and maybe then you'll cut the guy some slack, but I doubt it. At any rate, the Kerry revelations don't seem to be troubling him at all. He seemed in a very, very good mood, all smiles as he pointed out that the U.S.'s ouster from the U.N. Human Rights Committee happened because of our unilateralism and that the U.S.'s aim of building of a missile defense shield was a dangerous, stupid policy. I'd guess he's enjoying his celebrity. Maybe he had just heard that Gore Vidal, who named Hitchens as his successor (or daupin or delphino), had agreed to be a witness to Timothy McVeigh's execution at McVeigh's request? This is no hoax. (I belive liberals were in a tizzy about Hitchens refering to Starr as "Judge" Starr, not "Your Honor.") Peter
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,22495,00.html Writer Gore Vidal to Attend McVeigh's Execution Saturday, May 05, 2001 Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY — Novelist Gore Vidal plans to attend the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a man with whom he shares some views about the federal government.
Vidal, whose works include Burr, Lincoln and The Last Empire, said he began corresponding with McVeigh when the bomber wrote him about Vidal's 1998 article in Vanity Fair on "the shredding" of the Bill of Rights.
"We've exchanged several letters," the author said. "He's very intelligent. He's not insane."
McVeigh is to be executed May 16 at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., for the 1995 bombing of a federal building in which 168 people died. Vidal was chosen for one of three witness spots allowed McVeigh for friends or family.
"Do I approve of it?" Vidal asked of the bombing. "Of course I don't," he told The Oklahoman in Saturday's editions.
But the 75-year-old writer said he and McVeigh, 33, have similar views about the erosion of constitutional rights and about the federal government's 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, that left 80 people dead.
"This guy's got a case — you don't send the FBI in to kill women and children," he said.
"The boy has a sense of justice," Vidal said. "That's what attracted me to him."
Vidal said he will write an article for Vanity Fair about the execution and may write a movie about McVeigh "and those of us who object to the tyranny of the U.S. government against its people."
A man whose daughter died in the blast is giving up his opportunity to witness the execution. John Taylor, 70, of Oklahoma City, was one of 10 victims chosen at random by computer to attend the execution.
"We just felt we've given Mr. McVeigh enough of our time," Taylor told the newspaper. "We've given him six years of our lives. We don't want to give him another second." [end]