Hitch Dissects Truthiness

"When hunting for bigger game, Rich employs the concept of "truthiness," which he apparently borrowed from comedian Steven Colbert (more showbiz values). Thus, President Bush's statement that "I didn't say there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein" is, in Rich's estimation, "technically true but it is really just truthiness: Bush struck 9/11 like a gong in every fear-instilling speech about Iraq he could."

What Bush actually did, Hitchens explains, was to strongly imply that Saddam had an interest in or enthusiasm for the kind of activity that occurred on 9/11. And that proposition is more than just "truthy." Saddam had sheltered the fugitive who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. He had allowed the terrorist Abu Nidal to use Baghdad as his headquarters. He had boasted of paying bounties to the suicide-murderers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The man responsible for killing Leon Klinghoffer on the Achille Lauro was traveling on an Iraqi diplomatic passport. And the Baghdad state-run press had exulted at the revenge taken on America on 9/11.

Thus, asks Hitchens, can it be that those who thought Saddam "might have to be taken seriously as a sponsor of nihilistic violence" were wiser than "those who thought it crass to mention [him] and terrorism in the same breath?" The answer is "not without being jeered at by Rich, who either does not know any of the above facts or who chooses not to include any of them in his proudly truth-centered narrative.""