With each new article Hitchens continues to be brilliant, eloquent, and most often completely wrong. Why must each global issue he covers transfom into a springboard for his, "Why can't everyone be an athiest just like me" tirade? This is why he will never understand the motives and the work of Jimmy Carter, who has done more to promote peace in the middle east than the entirety of the Bush administration.

You can spot the moment where a well reasoned arguement becomes a blathering rant in the Queen's English, when he relies on ad hominum attacks to bolster his position; Carter is a 'religious fool', and Hamas is a bunch of 'gangsters' (*ehem* that's democratically elected gangsters to you, Chris).

So as long as Hitchens and Bush continue to disregard major international players in the middle east, the rockets will continue to fly over Palestine.

It doesn't take much mental work to realise the Demos have given us in the last several decades candidates for President from the poorest, least educated States in the Union, and expect much from them, other than be toadies to the Party line.

Hamas and Hezbollah are not major international players in any sense of the word, but just the terrorist orgs they really are.

Jimmy the Habitat for Humanity man is trying so hard to amend for his sins of of getting rid of the Shah of Iran and fostering the rise of the Ayatollas which have given us this latest bout of Islamic extremism.

If you frat boys can get away from the keg and read some history,like Hitchens, you might find something usefull!

This freaking Shah of Iran some refer to was responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Iranians courtesy his damn secret service.

Excuse the Iranians for wanting to get rid of that piece of shit.

I didn't REALIZE that we were talking about DemoCRATIC candidates here. But you're trying to tell me that Obama, Kerry, Clinton, and Dukakis are poor and uneducated? That's the first attack of that kind I've ever heard.

But back to the point: Hitchens has a wealth of knowledge of history and still manages to put together a worldview that's small and petty; Religion = fanatics = bad, etc.

Case in point: Hitchens enthusiastically defended Bush's irrational first strike policies against Saddam -- before and after we knew there were no WMD's. Speaking of bolstering Islamic extemism, they didn't used to exist in Iraq.

I did manage to put my keg down for a couple history classes (phew!), and I found that tactics of military deterrence don't work. I must have missed the lecture about ditching the lessons of the cold war, and propping up governments within cultures and regions we don't understand.

I don't think anyone has ever accused those guys of lacking in the intellect area, others, but not that. I don't think that IQ has ever been the deciding factor in great leaders. Sometimes I think intellect freezes decision making, think, Churchill, and Chamberlan. I'm sure Neville meant well, but, boy did he misread the situation. Jack Kennedy was probably the last single great mind we have seen, and I would suggest his military training probably got him past that "intellect" thing. Nobody would consider Ronald Reagan a great intellect, however, he was smart enough to stay focused on what he wanted to do, and did it. My choice is always with the intelllectually "adequate" types. They're never above asking for help or advise. They also seem to "see" the world in a more objective, realistic manner.

Regarding WMD's, we all know with certainty that Saddam had them and even used them on his own people. That is well documented. He certainly did nothing to dispell the suspicions with his "cat and mouse" game with the U.N. inspectors. My personal opinion was that the decision to go in became more and more a practical one as the cost to anchor an entire invasion force off Iraq was growing prohibitively day by day as the U.N. stammered on. A decision had to be made to move in or withdraw, with the best info that we had. As for extremist Islamic groups in Iraq, I don't know what you call it when the head of state pays "stipends" to families of Palestinian's bombers, but, sounds like a tacit endorsement of islamic extremist groups. Even Saddam's wife, who, while hiding in Lebanon, stated that she saw Bin Ladin in the same room as Saddam. I think it as only a matter of time that there would have been some kind of covert monetary assistance to Bin Ladin, if only from the stand point that Bin Laden would just be one more thorn in the side of the U.S. Also, Al Quaeda groups did exist in the northern Iraq areas near the Turkish border.

The Shah knew what was going on. He killed the Islamic terrorist types that were invading his country! Know your history frat boy types, you that leaned on the keg too long, or listened to your professor who had their own agenda, (or both).

Iran (Persia) was NOT in the Islamic camp, and historictally illiterate Carter did not realise that. He was so HUMANE after all, and saw only body counts. If you all knew your history, your world view might just change!

Of course I don't mean to suggest your list of Demo's are poor and uneducated, they are SMART as hell, but as one pundit put it recently, you send the smart ones off to Astronomy or Astro-physics where they can't do anybody any harm. What we want in our leaders is a sense of history, our place in time, and the good sense to deal with human nature.

It does seem strange to me that Ivy League educated Liberals go back to poor states and try to infect them with their own progressive new found ideas of the ways folks ought to live their lives or view their government.

Hitchens knows his history, as does Bush. Of course Saddam killed the Islamics, as did the Shah of Iran, as neither are true Muslims and didn't want that infection to come into their countries. Prob is that Saddam sat on the hughest accumulation of weapons in that part of the region and we could not afford it to fall into Islamic hands.

Another problem, we did not realise Iraq was so fractured as to to religious beliefs..or maybe we did..and took the chance that Iraq might adjust itself to some form of freedom, or democracy, and boot out the insurgents.

History should tell us of the radical Islamic ventures to change the world thru the centuries, if only we listen.