Hitchens v. Kissinger
: I’ve been amazed at how little fuming I’ve heard over the appointment of Henry Kissinger to the commission to look into our Sept. 11 security vulnerabilities.
Then came Hitch:
The Bush administration has been saying in public for several months that it does not desire an independent inquiry into the gross “failures of intelligence” that left U.S. society defenseless 14 months ago. By announcing that Henry Kissinger will be chairing the inquiry that it did not want, the president has now made the same point in a different way….
There is a tendency, some of it paranoid and disreputable, for the citizens of other countries and cultures to regard President Bush’s “war on terror” as opportunist and even as contrived. I myself don’t take any stock in such propaganda. But can Congress and the media be expected to swallow the appointment of a proven coverup artist, a discredited historian, a busted liar, and a man who is wanted in many jurisdictions for the vilest of offenses? The shame of this, and the open contempt for the families of our victims, ought to be the cause of a storm of protest.
:Mickey Kaus turns this into a duet (will it soon be a chorus?):
:Even if Bush wanted a whitewash, he could’ve picked a better whitewasher than Kissinger — at least if Bush wanted a whitewash that’s actually believed. …
: A double dose of Hitch at Slate today:
In most obvious ways, the term “anti-American” is as meaningless or absurd as the accusation “un-American” used to be.
