We interrupt our search for a hideout to bring you this: Belated advice from Christopher Hitchens, who has
finally got around to acknowledging the
obvious about Abu Ghraib:
We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what
we see. And one linguistic reform is in any case already much overdue. The silly word “abuse”
will have to be dropped. No law or treaty forbids “abuse,” but many conventions and statutes,
including our own and the ones we have urged other nations to sign, do punish torture — which is
what we are talking about here at a bare minimum.
As the children say, “Duh …” Or as the elderly among us might say, “Hitchens’s chickens have
come home to roost.” Methinks he’s looking for a way out of his bonehead
prowar stance on Iraq. If not, he oughta.
