Given that Kerry once went all the way to Vietnam under some kind of misapprehension about a war for democracy and launched a political career on the basis of what he finally learned when it was much too late, one might be tempted to discern a pattern here. But that temptation should probably be discarded. The Tonkin Gulf resolution was fabricated out of whole cloth (by a Democratic president, building on the legacy of another JFK from Massachusetts), and not even the most Stalinized of the Vietnamese leadership ever ran a regime, or proposed an ideology, as vile as that of Saddam Hussein. Indeed, Ho Chi Minh in 1945 modeled his declaration of independence on the words of Thomas Jefferson, appealed for American help against France, and might have got it if FDR had lived. Uncle Ho shared in the delusion that there could be an anti-colonial and anti-dictatorial empire. If that is indeed a delusion. …

I don't know why, but every time I'm ready to embrace Christopher Hitchens, he just makes me hate him. Why is this guy, who's been right about pretty much everything to do with 9/11 and the Iraq War, who actually had the God blessed balls to tell Noam Chomsky to go fuck himself, still making apologies for the we-really-didn't-mind-torturing-POWs-and-killing-a-million-of-our-people North Vietnamese?! Sorry Chris, despite your most fervent wishes, you're no George Orwell.