Not just suggestions

The BBC reports that the head of al-Jazeera is "demanding the facts on reports that President Bush suggested bombing the Arab TV station". Perhaps not coincidentally Robert Fisk writes about his visit to its Baghdad office in April 2003. He spoke to its chief Tareq Ayoub.

I remarked how easy a target his Baghdad office would make if the Americans wanted to destroy its coverage - seen across the Arab world - of civilian victims of the Anglo-American bombing of Iraq. "Don't worry, Robert," Tareq had replied. "We've given the Americans the exact location of our bureau so we won't get hit." Three days later, Tareq was dead.

We can only speculate how Christopher Hitchens, champion of the free press, might interpret this. However, Richard Seymour, mastermind behind Lenin’s Tomb, offers some suggestions with his insights into what he calls The Genocidal Imagination of Christopher Hitchens. After a clinical examination, he expresses concern not with Hitchens himself but his readers.

What is most alarming is that Hitchens has a new audience: he purveys his deranged fantasies about killing more and more evil-doers for the mass ranks of Republican twenty-somethings. Malodorous macho assholes who nevertheless like to think that their myopic nationalism and sociopathy has something to do with liberation and freedom - or just, indeed, something. This is his audience today - a collection of barely post-pubescent neophytic imperialists, and bumpkin billionaires who read the Weekly Standard.