I was prepared to go to town on Hitchen's laughable puffing of the bloody Seleucid regime of Antiochus Epiphanes, but see that someone not only beat me to it, but probably did so better than I could have done.

But Hitchen's comment about the Maccabean rebellion leading to Islam is so idiotic that it makes me wonder about the man's mental stablity. It's like arguing that the invention of coinage was unfortunate because it led to communism, or that the invention of writing was bad because it led to editorials like those written by Hitchens. Well, maybe I'll concede the latter point.