Hitchens Comes Unglued

I often disagree with Christopher Hitchens and find him terribly abrasive at times, but he has a long track record as an independent, intelligent thinker that I've always respected. That is until now. His latest column on the topic of the moment, the Rove/Plame affair, is so nasty and so analytically and ethically impoverished that I scarcely know where to begin.

Hitchens spends the first half of his column viciously tearing-apart Joe Wilson and defending Bush's Niger claim. Though Hitch is a bit over-the-top here, he's at least arguably right on the facts. Wilson has been inconsistent and his story was largely debunked by later investigations. But Hitchens soon leaves the land of reality and makes the following incredibly weak argument:

"What do you do, if you work for the Bush administration,
when a man of such quality is being lionized by an
anti-war press? Well, you can fold your tent and let
them print the legend. Or you can say that the word
of a mediocre political malcontent who is at a loose end,
and who is picking up side work from a wife who works
at the anti-regime-change CIA, may not be as
'objective' as it looks."

This makes no sense whatsoever. Does Hitch really believe that the Bush Administration had no choice but to out a covert CIA agent? Why couldn't they have just said that Wilson was a "mediocre political malcontent" without exposing his wife. What rhetorical force does her status really add to the argument anyway? Better yet, if Wilson was wrong, why not substantively rebutt his criticisms? Is character assassination really the only option? And what "anti-war press" is he talking about? The press I remember uncritically pimped everything the administration told them in the lead up to war, and then giddily went along for the ride as "inbeds." At the time Wilson came forward, the press was just starting to realize that perhaps the administration was wrong about WMD. And guess what, the adminstration was wrong about WMD, massively wrong. And even if the Niger evidence was rock solid, there is no doubt anymore that the administration (Cheney and Rice in particular) went well beyond the existing intelligence in hyping Iraq's nuclear threat in the lead up to war. This has been well-chronicled. But none of this seems to figure into Hitchens' analysis.

Hitchens then descends even further into the fever swamp. He spends an entire paragraph arguing that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 is a stupid law and that CIA operatives deserve to have their names leaked. Does Hitchens really think that our national security is served by leaking the names of our covert agents? Although I can't find it now (can anyone help?) I'm almost positive that Hitchens has previously argued that one of the primary problems with our intelligence system is the lack of human intelligence, i.e., field agents. And Plame's specialty was counter-proliferation. Hitchens argument is so very strange and petty.

Hitchens ends his nonsensical rant with the following:

"Many journalists are rightly appalled at Time magazine's
collusion with a prosecutor who has proved no crime and
identified no victim. Far worse is the willingness of the
New York Times to accept the demented premise of a
prosecutor who has put one of its own writers behind bars."

Since when is fighting an issue all the way to the Supreme Court considered collusion? And exactly what grounds did Time have for refusing to comply with the court order? As I've pointed out before, the situation at issue is not covered by the journalist-source privilege and almost certainly would not be covered by a federal shield law, if one existed. Hitchens points out that Fitzgerald has "proved no crime and identified no victim." But Fitzgerald is running a secret grand jury investigation which hasn't yet reached the indictment stage. What does Hitchen's expect? Moreover, that investigation has been greatly impeded by the Times and Judith Miller's refusal to obey the law. In his final sentence, Hitchens accuses the Times of accepting "the premise of a demented prosecutor." What does that even mean? What premise? The fact is, unless Hitch is a member of the grand jury, his statements about Fitzgerald and his investigation are totally baseless. He knows absolutely nothing about Fitzgerald or his investigation (none of us do).

I've never seen a column from Hitchens that is so lacking in perspective, so devoid of reasonable analysis, and so willing to render judgment on issues about which he knows nothing. As Hitch might say, it's pure rubbish.