Savor It: Transcript of Jon STEWART's Smackdown of HITCHENS

[UTUSN]

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http://www.wonkette.com/politics/jon-stewart/index.php

Category: jon stewart
Hitch Hits the Mat, the Video
Crooks and Liars has the video of Stewart very politely and quietly handing Christopher Hitchens his ass.

Christopher Hitchens vs. Job Stewart (C&L)

READ MORE: christopher hitchens , jon stewart , smackdowns , the daily show

Hitch v. Stewart: Stewart, TKO
The thing about Christopher Hitchens is that no matter how wrong or drunk he is, he always sounds like he's making sense. It's an impenetrable articulateness that makes him a compelling talking head even when he's talking out of his ass. He doesn't often fail to get the last word, but Jon Stewart just beat him to it. After a sublimely cordial conversation that began with Stewart asking Hitchens to explain "why I am wrong about Iraq," Hitchens bristled to Stewart's suggestion that the war was just "the British and Churchillian method that we'll just go into the Middle East and we'll redraw the map."

Stewart: The people who say we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. . . That is the conflation that is the most disturbing. . .
Hitch: Don't you hear people saying . . .
Stewart: You hear people saying a lot of stupid (bleep). . . But there are reasonable disagreements in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. . .
Hitch: (Sputter)
Stewart: They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence...
Hitch: I'm sorry, sunshine... I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn't give. . .
Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . . That's not why I ridiculed the president. He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people needs to convince.

(Audience erupts in applause)

Hitch: You want me to believe you're really secretly on the side of the Bush administration. . .
Stewart: I secretly need to believe he's on my side. He's too important and powerful a man not to be.

Hitch: (Sputter, return to talking about his latest book.)

Have never seen Hitch rattled like this. Really. Stirring. Go, Jon. Oh, and ass-fucking, boobies, gin, etc.

READ MORE: christopher hitchens , iraq , jon stewart , the daily show , war on terror

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[Chomskyite]

1. As a former admirer of Hitchens

. . . and a continuing reader and viewer of his as he descends to irrelevance, I have to say this is a first. He's one of the most deadly debaters you'll ever see on TV. Stewart was ready for him and just worked him.

[longship]

2. Woof! Woof!

This is an amazing take-down. In Python terminology, "he ran rings around him logically."

[blue sky at night]

3. why is it the people with nothing to loose.............

like Jon Stewart (since he is not elected) can speak so freely and with such clarity, and are so Sharp and Intelligent? Meanwhile the people we Elect and Pay to care about things...simply don't and can't, and are mostly Morans who only care about being Corporatist's? We need to draft this guy into Politics so we will have someone to vote for...God, I love that Man. Go Jon, Go.......Go Jonny, Go!!!!

[tlsmith1963]

5. I Agree

He is the only person on TV worth watching when it comes to politics. Where is everyone else? He shouldn't be the only one doing what he does. It's shameful.

Tammy

[blue sky at night]

8. Yo......... tlsmith1963............

WELCOME TO DU!!!! :) :) (where have you been, we have been waiting for you to show up??) Thanks for the Reply!! I don't watch much TV, but you are right, he is the only one showing us any (pardon the expression) "balls" on the vast wasteland!

[bucknaked]

4. To Mr. Hitchens... "You English, you're all so f***ing Pompous..."

"...none of you have any BALLS!"



Oh, no offense meant at our fellow Brit members.

[julianer]

7. Is that Mr De'ath

from the village?

[Malikshah]

10. No it was the Salmon Mousse!!

*imperiously pointing finger at the offending dish on the table*

[aquart]

6. Just what I wanted!

[teryang]

9. Actually...

Much as I loved the show last night and the confrontation with Hitchens, Jon wasn't responsive to Hitchens specious justifications for war with Iraq. He made his own points. That is the only way to handle these propaganda artists in an uncontrolled dialogue.

Nevertheless Stewart was masterful BECAUSE HE UNDERSTANDS THIS.

His video presentation on the *resident before Hitchens came out was devastating.

This show is awesome.

[XOKCowboy]

11. A Shameless Plug For CrooksandLiars.com

www.crooksandliars.com has the Hitchens video and a couple of other TDS clips on their website plus Cindy on Bill Maher and a host of other good video clips.

C&L is one of my favorite websites and all DUers should have them bookmarked.

[Garbo 2004]

12. Zarqawi was so dangerous, Bush refused to approve taking him out prewar..

The Administration didn't want to lose him as a justification for the war. And thus he remained alive to serve as a boogeyman for the Bushies. I recall the article about this on the MSNBC web site. Here it's mentioned in David Corn's 2004 article:

Letting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi go. Bush has pointed to the horrific terrorist acts mounted in Iraq by Zarqawi and his followers – car bombs, beheadings, assassinations – as justification for the war in Iraq. Look, Bush argues, Zarqawi is evidence that the war in Iraq is indeed a critical component of the war on terrorism. But last March, NBC News reported that thrice before the war in Iraq the Pentagon drew up plans to attack Zarqawi and that each time the White House nixed the strike. The Wall Street Journal confirmed this several days ago. Why didn't Bush hit Zarqawi when he had the chance? The White House claims the intelligence was not sound enough, though former government officials told the Journal that was not so. NBC News reported, "Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam." So did Bush pass up the chance to attack Zarqawi – whom he now cites as justification for the invasion of Iraq – because he was too obsessed with invading Iraq? The Zarqawi episode has drawn not much media attention, and Bush has avoided fielding tough questions about the decision to ignore Zarqawi before the war. http://www.alternet.org/story/20351/

And Ansar al-Islam operated in territory not controlled by Saddam and they received support from Iran, not Iraq. Another factoid not cited by Hitch. As Matthew Yglesias' 2003 article notes:

Early in the war, U.S. forces targeted the group's camps with widely-reported strikes, coverage of which did not take the time to note that joint action with Kurdish forces against these terrorists could have been undertaken without launching a broader attack on the Hussein regime, which had been prohibited from launching military operations in the area for several years thanks to the vigilance of U.S. and British air power. Indeed, the fact that America had been conducting military strikes within the Iraqi no-fly zone where Ansar operated for several years, and had committed itself to fighting a war on al Qaeda over a year before the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom should have given some pause to those relaying tales of the group's threatening nature. If Ansar's activities really did pose a significant threat to the United States, then we should have attacked them at the earliest possible opportunity, but it seems that the administration found them to be more useful alive, as a bogus argument in favor of war, than dead.

Having served its polemical purpose, the group largely disappeared from the administration's discourse, until a late-March raid on an Ansar camp produced a flurry of media coverage highlighting the group's work on chemical weapons and its ties to al Qaeda while downplaying its utter lack of connection to the Hussein regime and, therefore, the war in Iraq.

At this point, Ansar al-Islam members appear to have fled across the border to Iran (which, as The New Republic pointed out in June, was always a more plausible candidate for the role of state sponsor anyway). Since that time, fighters are said to have snuck back across the border to attack U.S. forces, providing renewed excuses for the administration to imply that the group constituted an important link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.aspx?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=11930&printmode=1

Put down the bottle, Hitch, and do your homework.

[NewWaveChick1981]

13. I saw it...

... and I stood up and applauded Jon!