>I have a ready answer to those who accuse me of being an agent and
>tool of the Bush-Cheney administration (which is the nicest thing that
>my enemies can find to say). Attempting a little levity, I respond
>that I could stay at home if the authorities could bother to make
>their own case, but that I meanwhile am a prisoner of what I actually
>do know about the permanent hell, and the permanent threat, of the
>Saddam regime. However, having debated almost all of the spokespeople
>for the antiwar faction, both the sane and the deranged, I was
>recently asked a question that I was temporarily unable to answer. "If
>what you claim is true," the honest citizen at this meeting politely
>asked me, "how come the White House hasn't told us?"
>
>I do in fact know the answer to this question. So deep and bitter is
>the split within official Washington, most especially between the
>Defense Department and the CIA, that any claim made by the former has
>been undermined by leaks from the latter. (The latter being those who
>maintained, with a combination of dogmatism and cowardice not seen
>since Lincoln had to fire General McClellan, that Saddam Hussein was
>both a "secular" actor and--this is the really rich bit--a rational
>and calculating one.)
>
>There's no cure for that illusion, but the resulting bureaucratic
>chaos and unease has cornered the president into his current fallback
>upon platitude and hollowness.
Wow. So Hitch is willing to make an argument that a gang of experienced, skilled, professional liars shies away from? How's that for boldness?
Doug