For those of us who hesitate to speak ill of the dead, Glenn Greenwald does the favor of doing it for us:

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/christoh...aths/singleton/

Despite all his faults, may Hitchens rest in peace.

Hitchens did believe in God. He just believed God was himself. Too bad he couldn't apply all that "power of reason" stuff to his drinking and smoking. Eloquent douchebag, good riddance.

And for those of us who don't hesitate...

I think Hitchens would possibly have enjoyed the less inhibited comments and remembrances more than the others.

Did Hitchens ever write a remembrance for any of the 4500 service members who died in Iraq?

Not that I recall.

His position on the war was as incomprehensible, as it was indefensible. But if you want to go after members of the media for supporting the run up to the war he wasn't alone.

I was listening to some MSNBC commentary recently about how the mainstream media has learned it's lesson, and they, Reporters, Columnists, Journalists, wouldn't be so easily used again. Bullshit. Maybe some, but as a whole, they'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. Whether or not the new media would let them get away with it is another question.

Here's the thing, though. Hitchens wasn't like Bill Kristol, who also cheered on the Iraq War but lives and breathes in the conservative sewer where such things don't matter. Hitchens' audience, employers and even his social circle were made up of people who either opposed the Iraq War from the start or eventually realized what a friggin' disaster it was. Yet, there's never been any example or evidence of Hitchen's unrepentant support for such a debacle causing him any professional, economic or personal inconvenience. And it wasn't because he got cancer. That happened in mid 2010, leaving at least half a decade where Hitchens' "let's go kill some Muslims" propagandizing could have been held against him.

Mike

One thing about Hitchens' support that differed from Bush et al. was that he said early on that WMDs didn't particularly matter; Saddam Hussein deserved to be taken down based on previous crimes against humanity.

It wasn't just Saddam, though. Hitchens bought hook, line and sinker into the whole "Islamofascists are coming to get us" hysteria. But, as blogger Kevin Drum pointed out, Hitchens went from being a Trotskyist to being a rabid Clinton hater to being an equally rabid Iraq war supporter. That's not exactly the intellectual trajectory of a great mind.

Mike

Not without reason, Hitchens feared the the reemergence of religious zealotry in the 21st century. That's the prism through which he viewed the 9/11 terror attacks, and then the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Nobody is right all the time. It's a shame Hitchens was so adamantly wrong on this one, though.