Hitchens has STONES

George Galloway:

To Saddam Hussein: “Your Excellency, Mr. President, I greet you in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq”¦ I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.”

On Cuba: “a remarkable society… a model for the world.”

On the USSR: “Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.”

On Bush, Blair, Koizumi, and Berlusconi: “Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalised capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known.”

(A few more choice quotes can be found here.)

Fortunately, this nonsense doesn’t go unchallenged. Chris Hitchens has been one of the loudest critics of Galloway of late, most recently this comment:

The “anti-war” movement has as its new star a man who is openly pro-war, but openly on the other side. A man who supported the previous oppressors of the region””?the Soviet army in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq””?who supports its current oppressors””?Bashar Assad and his Lebanese proxies””?and who still has time to endorse its potential future tyrants in the shape of the jihadists in Iraq and elsewhere. Galloway began his political life as a fifth-rate apologist for the Soviet Union, but he has now diversified into being an apologist for Stalinism, for fascism, and for jihadism all at once…

Hitchens also revealed he will be stepping into the Viper pit to debate Galloway, who is currently on his US “Peace” Tour. The moderator will be none other than Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! fame. And the forum will be taking place in New York.

Read Hitchen’s reasons for going here. Tickets are available here. The event will be broadcast live on audio here and here.