You wrote: "I find it highly debatable that those AQ forces that relocated to Iraq from Afghanistan would have had either the opportunity to enter Iraq or the fortune to survive Afghanistan had we not committed troops elsewhere and eliminated Mr. Hussein."

But what Hitchens has argued, and what the recently released Iraqi government files support, is that terrorists from Afghanistan moved to Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Since at the time this happened the forces in Afghanistan weren't being "diverted" to Iraq, you can't blame the relocation on anything besides U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan.