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Let me begin with a simple sentence
that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its
proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and
dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad."
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I could undertake to defend that
statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and
I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it.
Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a
concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword
for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the
difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a
post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where
should one begin?
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How's that? Not enough? OK. How
'bout:
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(O)ne still cannot read the
journals of the 2000/2001 millennium without the feeling that one is revisiting
a hopelessly somnambulist relative in a neglected home. I am one of those who
believe, uncynically, that Osama bin Laden did us all a service (and holy war a
great disservice) by his mad decision to assault the American homeland four
years ago. Had he not made this world-historical mistake, we would have been
able to add a Talibanized and nuclear-armed Pakistan to our list of the threats
we failed to recognize in time. (This threat still exists, but it is no longer
so casually overlooked.)
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Not done yet:
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For anyone with eyes to see, there
was only one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of
both "rogue" and "failed." This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and
collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions under which a country may be
deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. To recapitulate: It had
invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured
international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular
insult to its own resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a
system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as
they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's slot as
chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of
gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu Musab al Zarqawi
was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof.
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So much good stuff here:
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Childishness is one thing--those of
us who grew up on this wonderful Edwardian author were always happy to see the
grown-ups and governesses discomfited. But puerility in adults is quite another
thing, and considerably less charming. "You said there were WMDs in Iraq and
that Saddam had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire." I have
had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to intone
the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very
least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for
the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in
Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead
American soldiers to nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete
centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay
Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003,
negotiating to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf
Ekeus, the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq
after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million bribe in
a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching examples would by
no means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver.
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There's a great deal more besides, and you owe it
to yourselves to give it a read.
He's good, that Chris Hitchens. The man is
good.
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