You make a few valid points about Hitchens. At the same time, despite Hitchens' ferocity in pursuing the Iraq issue, declaration as a single issue voter (not that he was even able to vote in the last election anyhow); Hitchens has advocated numerous issues in the past. He has frequently been damning in his remarks about ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its ongoing disgusting settlement project (he did after all co-edit a book with Edward Said on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and he has been a vocal advocate towards the abolition of the death penalty, among other issues.

Hitchens has even gone so far as to claim, in a Vanity Fair article, that despite his support for the Bush Administration, he believes that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. (http://www.vanityfair.com/pol­itics/features/2005/03/hitchen­s200503)

Despite his failures at self criticism and his stabs at self aggrandizement, Hitchens remains interesting to read because he generally is right on certain issues. His recent tendency to frame issues in black and white, such as his most recent religion vs secularism screeds is frightening in a way, at the same time, religion is so ridiculous and a concept and has been so destructive to then ongoing development and evolution of human society; perhaps Hitchens is correct to so viciously oppose it.