Christopher Hitchens once again proves that, in addition to being the Right's favourite apostate, he remains an utter prick
He didn't misuse facts. He made them up out of whole cloth. It would be very difficult to list every single fabrication in this piece, because every claim is somehow distorted or fabricated, but one key example is the claim of Chomsky's 'inconsistency'.
Hitchens claims that Chomsky's statements about the lack of direct evidence linking Bin Laden to 9/11 are somehow 'new' and inconsistent with his prior statements. In reality, they are an almost verbatim reiteration of what he has been saying on the subject every time it's come up since 2001.
His reference to the Moussawi trial is a joke, as was the trial itself. Moussawi was prohibited from participating in his own defence, and most of the evidence against him was never disclosed to him at all. He took a plea because of the threat of being transferred to a military 'tribunal'. The evidence, which never saw the light of a courtroom as a result, was that he had repeatedly tried to join up with Al-Qaeda groups, but was rejected as being 'mentally unstable'.
Similarly, Chomsky did not create a false moral equivalency between the destruction of half of the pharmaceuticals production of desperately poor Sudan, killing thousands instantly and estimated tens of thousands as a result of the lack of medicines (the US prevented a UN investigation). He rightly pointed out that its consequences were much worse than those of 9/11.
This piece actually represents a new low in Hitchens' abysmal career.
Oh, and there's the supreme (and ironic) dishonesty of trying to associate Chomsky with 'Truthers', though he does this in the same way that Bush had of associating Saddam with 9/11 - context and implication. It's worth remembering that Hitchens was one of Bush's leading propagandists when it came to the nonexistent WMDs and the nonexistent Saddam-Osama BFF relationship.
In reality, the 'Truthers' hate Chomsky with a passion because he thinks they're full of shit and suggests that facts might matter a little more than things people on the Internet made up.
On 5/9/11 6:19 PM, CallMe Ishmael wrote:
> Hitchens' sneering rebuttal
>
> http://www.slate.com/id/2293541/
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