This wide-ranging interview with Christopher Hitchens is pretty interesting. The interviewer says "[Hitchen's] scorn for lowest common denominator thinking, whether from the left or the right, is as entertaining as it is jarring." Hey, that's what I aspire to as well. Some excerpts:

There are several arguments for attacking Iraq. One is the violation of the convention against genocide. If you sign the genocide convention, you have to punish people who commit genocide, and Saddam certainly has done that. I think the strongest case is the responsibility to rescue the Iraqi people from a bastard regime.

A decent respectful hypocrisy and diplomacy means you can’t say we’re doing this to put the Saudis back in that box, teach them a lesson, to change the ways of the Middle East. So they do have to come up with arguments that aren’t as good. I just hope they don’t start believing their own propaganda.

People say, “I think Jesus is my best friend.” No one responds as they should to that, which is to say, “You should be locked up, that’s utter crap.”

Al Gore had allowed himself to become a humble, hollowed-out, humiliated figure. I didn’t want a zombie to be the president of the United States.

And now Gore and wife say that Bush is picking a fight with Iraq? Fuck them. I really mean it. I have nothing but contempt for them. We are risking people’s lives, and all they can be is flippant.