--actually, i don't think he was at all 'in a good mood' or soft on me. nor do i believe he adequately addressed my main argument, namely that he is spending more time attacking the left than taking apart the weak war marketing sell that is being made to the people of the US by the Bush administration. I think he was expecting me to make a grand defense of leftists, but I found it better to put him on the spot for either defending or ignoring the excuses (or lies) the Bush administrations has created to justify its war ambitions in Iraq. He couldn't address this matter, aside from a perfunctory remark that of course there are 'some' exaggerations in every war. This coming from a would be modern day Orwell is truly rich. That Dennis as someone who once worked for FAIR finds nothing problematic about Hitch's trivialization of lies from warmakers is even more prize.
I didn't "mention Vietnam and Iraq" in the same sentence, I did mention the lies used to justify wars in Vietnam and Iraq...1) and 2) the bogus claims made by detractors that the peace movement in both cases was aiding a dangerous enemy (in this case the militarily laughable country of Iraq and in Vietnam's case the NLF, Soviet Union, and China).
Then his arguments against Scott Ritter...again, for a would be Orwell epigone to belittle Ritter-- truly precious...Remarkable, but as I said at the end, Hitch trusts Bush more than Ritter...And his characterization of Ritter as saying that he could guarantee Iraq doesn't have nuclear or chemical weapons is a Bush ploy at best. Ritter doesn't make that claim, he does claim that it is very unlikely (albeit impossible to know without inspections) and that inspections would be able to eliminate that capacity, which is what they were in the process of doing until Clinton bombed Iraq rendering inspections impossible.
Hitch's rerendering of the Atta-Iraq meeting...really he should give it up...even the Czech gov't now has publicly rejected the source of that rumor...but, hey, if Bush says it is true...why question it....
I didn't get the sense that he enjoyed the exchange with me at all. I think he hoped I would incoherently defend Chomsky or some such thing....but I don't think that his ad hominem attacks on Chomsky or the left are that interesting. More or less they appear to be his strategy for gaining a media platform in this war debate in which no anti-war leftists are allowed. His failure to take on the dreaded abuse of language by the Bush administration (and his Democratic Party confreres) is really the point he is weakest on as a would be "left" contrarian in the tradition of Orwell (!).
Steve