Iraq War Debate between Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway

for our stress withdrew thank you it's always a pleasure next a debate on the war in Iraq with British Parliament member George Galloway who opposes the war and author Christopher Hitchens who favors it Democracy Now radio host Amy Goodman moderates this debate it's two hours well I can't think of a more critical time to have this debate the resolution on the floor the March 2003 war in Iraq was necessary and just our first speaker will be Christopher Hitchens he will speak [Applause] he will speak for 15 minutes George Galloway will then have 15 minutes to respond we'll follow the same order for the next two rounds one of ten minutes and then five minutes and then we'll have a 35 minute discussion and follow up with five minute closing remarks when the order will be reversed George Galloway is with the respect party MP for Bethnal Green and bow in East London [Applause] he recently he recently testified before the Senate permanent Subcommittee on investigations hearing on May 17 [Applause] responding to charges related to Iraq soil for food program he's the author of a new book published by the new press called mr. Galloway goes to Washington Christopher Hitchens is a widely published polemicist and frequent radio and TV commentator contributing editor to Vanity Fair author of a long short war why Orwell matters the trial of Henry Kissinger and many other books including two published by nation books which he'll be signing tonight love poverty and war and blood class and Empire we'll begin first with the opening statement of Christopher Hitchens [Applause] [Music] thank you very much Remy you can take it out of my time but I would propose that we begin with a moment of silence for the 160 people who were sadistically murdered in Baghdad this morning as they went to their places of work or stayed in their places of abode and as they hope to register for the upcoming elections I hope I can get an agreement for a moment of respect for them very good and I thought those comments were also very worth the hearing I'm very grateful to the organizers for making this possible I considered a great distinction to stand on the podium at Baruch College named for the great Bernhard baroque who first in 1946 proposed that weapons of mass destruction be placed under international inspection and control I'm grateful to the audience also for giving me the chance to revisit my mr. Ben Trotsky is Jay's dishing out a leaflet in steaming heat on the street outside made me feel and look I hope much younger and we're also of course on this side of the house here to share with mr. Galloway the ambition that his views and his record be much better known than they are and most of you I hope will have the leaflet the details this and there's a huge Aaron's who lives we were watching or joining us from other audiences can go to Hitchens web.com and download the whole lot and I hope they will and share it an impression I think ladies and gentlemen has been allowed to form and it perhaps even to coagulate and to congeal that it is only those of us who support the regime change the revolutionary change in Iraq who have any explaining to do I think that that assumption needs to be counted from the very beginning if you examine the record of the so-called anti-war movement in this country and imagine what would have happened had its counsel being listened to over the last 15 and more years you would have a world in which the following would be the case Saddam Hussein would be the owner and occupier of Kuwait he would have succeeded in the annexation not merely the invasion but the abolition of an Arab and Muslim state there was a member of the Arab League and of the United Nations and with these resources as we now know because he lost that war he was attempting to equip himself with the most terrifying Arsenal that it was possible for him to ladies that's one consequence of anti-war politics that's what would have happened isn't meanwhile slobodan milosevic would have made Bosnia part of a greater Serbia and Kosovo would have been ethnically cleansed and also annexed the Taliban would be still in power in Afghanistan if the anti-war movement have been listened to and al-qaeda would still be their guests and Saddam Hussein with his crime family would still be privately holding ownership over a terrorized people in a state that's been most help they aptly described as a concentration camp above-ground and a mass grave underneath it now if I had that record politically I would be extremely modest I wouldn't be demanding explanations from those of us who said it's about time that we stopped this continual capitulation to dictatorship to racism to aggression and to totalitarian ideology that we will not allow to be repeated in Iraq the failures in Rwanda and in Bosnia and in Afghanistan and elsewhere and we take pride in having taken that position and we take pride in our Iraqi and Kurdish friends who are conducting this struggle on our behalves I should say what did it mean to accept this responsibility we knew it was a weighty one and we knew it was a dangerous one I've argued I will argue that the wars both just and necessary I think what can separate perhaps the two concepts Iraq had lost its sovereignty as far as a state can do under international law there are four conditions under which a state may be deemed or said to have sacrificed its sovereignty these are if it participates in regular aggressions against neighboring states or occupations of their territory if it's violates all the little letter and spirit of the terms of the non peripheral excuse me the non-proliferation treaty and in other words fools around promiscuously with the illegal acquisition of weapons of mass destruction third if it should violate the Genocide Convention the signatories to which are obliged without further notice to act either to prevent or to punish genocide and fourth if it plays host to Internet no gangsters nihilists terrorists and jihadists Iran met all these four conditions repeatedly and would have demonstrated its willingness to repeat them on many occasions its sovereignty was at an end it was under international sanctions it was a ward of the international community its people were being starved in order to build palaces for their psychopathic dictator and it was furthermore imploding as a state and as a society the divide and rule policy of the Baath Party had led to appalling ethnic and confessional hatreds within the country an imploded state would have made these worse and you know who would have invaded then Turkey would have invaded to try and take Kurdistan Iran would have invaded to support its extremists Khomeini I'd proxies and Saudi Arabia would have intervened in order to do the same favor for the Sunni and Wahhabist and Salafist extremists as a matter of fact all these three foreign interventions are taking place at present all those three powers are trying to meddle in Iraq but we're fortunate as are the Iraqi people that there is a coalition to hold the ring and to prevent it from becoming another Rwanda or another Congo another vortex of violence and cruelty and destabilization and war and this I think again is a point to take pride in it was the only responsible course I'm willing at any point to take questions and I'm sure I shall be invited to about my own criticisms of and misgivings about differences with those who can touch it and conduct this policy but on this main or these main points it seems to me that there's very little room for debate what are the thank you [Applause] now we we know and we make no secret of the extraordinary difficulties that have attended this this I think very noble and risky and worthwhile Enterprise all of you will know all of you will have seen some of the consequences of this but you have I think the responsibility of imagining what the alternative would be I am simply going to say what I think the positive reasons are excuse me the positive consequences are and I hope someone will be showing me the time Amy just so I don't trespass on my own argument or the patience of the comrades who's going to be showing me the time yeah okay will you let me know when I've got three minutes saying positive results ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters a man who planned and ordered and supervised and took delight in the genocide and torture and aggression and the occupation of two neighboring states and the massacres of their people is in jail now and we'll follow Slobodan Milosevic and Argost Oh Pinochet into the dock quite soon I know there are some people here who don't take delight in this but I will say that I do and that it's a long overdue justice [Applause] a long overdue act of justice and mercy a constitution the federal democratic constitution is being debated now as we speak with the printing of five million copies of aboriginal document debated on six television channels six and perhaps as many as a hundred newspapers in a country where three years ago it was death not just for you but for your family to possess a satellite dish or to attempt to distribute a leaflet death for you and your family are not a quick one either does anyone not agree that this is a night and day difference I invite them to say if they do the largest stateless minority in the Middle East the people of Kurdistan in other words who have suffered many years of oppression and exile and and occupation in Syria in Iraq in Iran and in Lebanon and in Turkey have began to scramble so just say to their feet to assume something like their full height as a people even before the intervention they were producing an autonomy a democracy a self-determination of their own in the provinces of northern Iraq which when I saw them last were were a landscape of of desolation and depravity you could still smell the poison gas you could still smell the mass graves the ruined cities the burned hillsides that the women who had chemical burns that still burn after years out of this the Kurds have begun to build and help other Iraqis blow when they could have been chauvinistic they could have been xenophobia they could have said enough with with Iran with we're through with it we're leaving instead accepted their international responsibilities president Talabani it seems to me as a president of whom any country in the region could be proud and not just by the sort of comparisons one could make this is an extraordinary unarguable unambiguous gain the disarmament of Libya capitulation of Colonel Gaddafi is a abandonment of his covert arsenal of mass weapons of mass destruction and the walking back of the evidence that he gave us because we all have it now thank you sir in um in Oakridge Tennessee which i think is the right place for it on analysis was were able to disclose to us that the provenance of much of this illegal weaponry was the AQ Khan Network in Pakistan a kind of Walmart for WMD nukes are us without line stretching all the way from North Korea to the Iraqi n voice who in March 2003 as the coalition was preparing to intervene were negotiating in Damascus with the end voice of Kim Jong Il to buy North Korean missiles off the shelf and people say Iraq and WMD can't be mentioned in the same breath now not everything about this could be attributed to the intervention but it's noticeable I think that Congress did not when he wanted to capitulate go to mr. Kofi Annan for example all that great statesman mr. Jacques Chirac a man so corrupt as said of mystery of Dalembert I think in sentimental education so corrupt you would willingly have paid for the pleasure of selling himself nor to Gerhard schröder the rump figure of what was once a proud German so freedom ox you know he came to mr. Blair and to mr. Bush and says I'm out of this game now and you can analyze everything I have got that's not nothing ladies and gentlemen and it's a step towards disarmament and non-proliferation into the bargain and then the spread no less important of the Democratic impulse within the region not only is this being spread by the vector of the Kurdish people in their revolution because as you will will you will be readily able to find if you haven't read over it already there have been demonstrations in Qamishli the Kurdish main city in northern Syria among the oppressed Kurds who suffer under the ossified theocracy of Iran and of course in Turkey as well to pick up the message that yes liberation is at hand these demonstrations broke out on the day that president Talabani was sworn in as president of Iran there's an unmistakable connection between them we who have been friends of the Kurds are very proud of their achieve and we intend to stand by them no matter what [Applause] I will add that the the moral leader of the Egyptian democracy movement the man who has begun to break open the argument in Egypt and who suffered a long period of imprisonment during this time and was written to by Nelson Mandela as Egypt's equivalent has told me and for quotation that in his opinion this new mood in the in the region would be unthinkable if it was not for the removal of the single worst tyrant who was present there that's not nothing as in point of testimony that's from deep within the bowels of the Egyptian prison system the man who is the moral hero of the democracy we would he says and I agree with him and he's echoed by Anwar Ibrahim as far away as Malaysia who is the Malay equivalent and by the leader of the Socialist Party of Lebanon mr. Jim lat have all stated publicly that this for them is the beginning of the end the fall of the wall as they put it this I think is also something to take pride in now I could have said this in front of any audience and against any antagonist but in my last two minutes I will have to say that I believe it is a disgrace that a member of the British House of Commons should go before the United States Senate subcommittee and not testify but declined to testify and to insult all those retries know asking questions with the most vile and cheap guttersnipe abuse I think that's a disgrace [Applause] [Music] it is waste under disgrace if you [Applause] that's not coming that's not coming out of my time if you knew how you looked and sounded comrades when you do that well you the cameras can take care of it that's not coming out of my time it is not a just a disgrace it is a crime that mr. Gaddafi has profited from the theft of money from the Iraqi oil for food program has told continuous lies about his profiteering from it and the foul associates that he made and it's time when Iraqi children were dying and 11 billion from this program 11 billion went to the murderer and criminal and sadist and fanatic Saddam Hussein - how can anyone who's a business partner of this regime show their face in a city like this and not content with it not content with it with it he turns up in Damascus the man searched for a tyrannical fatherland never ends the Soviet Union's let him down Albania is gone the Red Army's out of Afghanistan attracts a target the hunt persists Saddam has been overthrown and his criminal connections with him have been exposed but on to the next on the 30th of July in Damascus in Syria appearing I've given it all to you in a piece of paper in front of mr. Assad whose Jeth squads are cutting down the leaders of democracy in Lebanon as this is going on to tell the Syrian people they're fortunate to have such a leader the slobbering dopher who they got because he's the son of the slobbering tired no play before him how anyone would so in socialist principle Canucks will speak in this way is beyond me and I hope ladies and gentlemen far beyond you and far beneath your contempt thank you [Applause] George George Galloway your response well Jer ladies and gentlemen slobbering was the note that mr. Hitchens chose to end on I'm not sure that was wise read bring it on but I want to begin by praising mr. Hitchens in Dundee my home city at the annual delegate meeting of the National Union of Journalists 25 years ago the same mr. Hitchens made a speech in which he praised me and the City Council for what he described as its brave act of twinning the city of Dundee with the Palestinian city of Nablus he said no no no must have been someone else that it was I didn't interrupt you so perhaps you're not slobber over my remarks someone else you see it was very important mr. hitchens support for the Palestinian people and it was not easy in 1980 only a few years before the Palestinian resistance had seized the Israeli Olympic Games team in Munich and had committed what most people in the world described as an act of mass terrorism mr. Hitchens courageous stand with groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine the hijackers of many an aircraft the carrying out of many a military operation was very significant because it was very real equally I want to thank mr. Hitchens for the brave stand that he made against the war on Iraq in 1991 I want to I want to say and I've never had the chance to thank him for this one of the magic moments of that great era was Christopher Hitchens on television with the gun nut Charlton Heston when Heston was fulminating desperate to get in there desperate to attack Hitchens told him to keep his wig on and then he asked him magically to name four countries with a border with the country he was so keen to invade and heston of course good name none that was important because it was very difficult to oppose the war against Iraq in 1991 after all it was ruled by some day called Saddam Hussein it was governed by the bath party who continued to govern it thereafter it was only three years since those chemical weapons that mr. Hitchens could still smell when he was last there had been launched against the Kurdish people whom he will never leave alone only three years before Halabja had taken place and of course perhaps most significantly of all it was difficult to oppose that attack on Iraq in 1991 because Iraq had invaded and abolished to quote him a few minutes ago a member state of the Arab League of the United Nations a Muslim Arab country notwithstanding all of these things mr. Hitchens bravely fanatically you may say stood against the idea of President George Bush invading Iraq in 1991 what you are what you have witnessed since is something unique in natural history the first ever metamorphosis from a butterfly back into a slug and I mentioned I mentioned Slug purposefully because the one thing a slug does leave behind it is a trail of slime no I was brought up by my father on the principle never to wrestle with a chimney-sweep because whatever you do you can't come out clean but you mr. hitchens are no chimney sweep that's not coal dust in which you are covered you are covered in the stuff you like to smear on to others not just me with your gob Elian leaflets full of selective quotation half-truth miss truth and downright untruth and the comments you made in your last two minutes of this speech but people much more gentle than me people like Cindy Sheehan whom you described whom you described as a sob sister as a flake as a la Russia a woman who gave the life of her son for the war that you have come here to glory in people like mr. Hitchens are ready to fight to the last drop of other people's blood and it's utterly contemptible utterly and completely contemptible no Hitchens makes much and I know that he will in his next segment so I shall to coin a phrase he emptied of the nature and character of those resisting the foreign invasion and occupation in Iraq I spoke last night in Boston in a hall where many of the leaders of the great American Revolution stood and spoke my favorite member of the British Parliament has a statue it's the first one you meet as you walk in st. Stephens entry it is a statue of Charles James Fox he was expelled twice from Parliament for supporting the American Revolution and supporting the French Revolution now some might say Fox was wrong supporting the anti-colonial struggle of the American people after all some might say better be careful what you wish for Charlie maybe one day the independent free country you're supporting the birth of will be ruled by crazed fundamentalists like Pat Robertson and George W Bush and Dick Cheney and Michael Ashcroft they might have said be careful charlie if this country becomes free it might one day not even be able to pick up the dead bodies in one of its most important cities a week after they'd land there such as the malevolence and incompetence of the government which will but Fox would have said no Fox would have said no he would have said the American people have a right to be free who they choose to rule them is a matter for them let them make their mistakes let them have their own politics my country has no right to occupy them any further now I am of Irish background myself when the Irish people rose in 1916 for their freedom to strike one of the first decisive blows against the british empire on which the Sun never set because God would never trust the English in the dark when the Irish people rose the hitchens of those days in Bloomsbury in the salons denounced the Irish rebels as priests ridden bogged rotting Celtic Gaelic obscurantists to whom they would never issue from Bloomsbury a certificate of approval but the only certificate of approval that mattered was the one issued by the Irish people not the Liberals in London who refused to endorse it my point is this for us in the United States and the United Kingdom there is only one big question mr. Bush actually framed it for us are you with the foreign occupation of Iraq or are you with the right of the Iraqi people to be free and to resist the foreign armies who are violently invaded on that's why that's why that cheap cheap demagoguery by Hitchens at the beginning of this debate got the Riza Bowl response that it did from this audience because he wants you to have he wants you to make a minute silence for the 145 today but he can't bring himself to mention the massacre Intel effort over the last four days in Iraq he doesn't want to know about the massacre in Fallujah when the American armed forces [Applause] destroy the city and Massacre thousands of people now this debate as Amy Goodman said is taking place at a very important time on a very important subject this war in which he glories although I wish how I wish upon a dinner and pick up a gun and go and fight himself how I wish how I wish to see that sight this war in which he glories has cost the lives according to those well-known said amidst France The Lancet and Johns Hopkins University well in excess of a hundred thousand people's lives and hundreds of thousands more have been maimed and wounded and it was all for a pack of lies there were no weapons of mass destruction there was no link between Iraq and al Qaeda there was no link between Iraq and the atrocities on the 9th of September on the 9/11 here in the United States there was no welcome for the foreign armies that invaded Iraq Hitchin said they would be greeted by flowers but there are 2,000 young American boys lying in the ground now testimony to the fact that they were welcomed by something else and thousands and thousands more wounded maimed many of them in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives testament to the folly of Hitchens and Bush and Cheney and the rest of the neocon gang that dragged your country into this disaster [Applause] International the international legal and political system has been defaced and disfigured the world has been made a more dangerous place not just for us but for our children and their children for generations to come the world has been made a more dangerous place Hitchens asked us to believe the hundreds of thousands of Western soldiers invading a Muslim country would make less Islamist fundamentalism he asked us to believe that devastating Iraq and making a Yugoslavia on top of the world's biggest oil field would make the world a safer and more stable place there is scarcely a sentient being in the land who any longer believes that the war on Iraq was either necessary or just or a good idea no you may very well ask why so many people wanted to come in here and watch and listen to two British guys debating in the United States of America about a war far away I think the reason is this our two countries are the biggest rogue states in the world today and it is therefore vitally important it is therefore it is therefore vitally important that those who oppose the crimes of our governments on both sides of the Atlantic link hands link arms stand shoulder to shoulder until we've rid the world of George W Bush and Anthony Blair once and for all thank you very much christopher hitchens ten minutes well I think it's I can say that's a sort of a pleasure to be sorted by mr. Galloway under any of my identities I've never made a speech at a journalist's conference in Dundee for example I don't know who does mr. Galloway's research though I think I can get McCartney said I've never Eamonn McCann remember him I remember Eamonn McCann very well by the way he gives me the opportunity to say that I've been a lifelong supporter of the reunification of Ireland and with Edward Sayid in the early years of the Intifada as there is 86 published a book which you can still get from new life books Versa call blaming the victims about the struggle for for the full establishment of Palestinian rights and yes it's true that I was an opponent of the last Gulf War I don't know anyone thought that to make such a point was a point against me I daresay I might not have been invited here in this this battle of the Titans if if it wasn't tolerably well known that I think I was probably mistaken on that occasion if you can assimilate a point as similar as simple as that ladies and gentlemen which I just say you can for I shan't insult you now that you have to notice something about what mr. Galloway just said and the rhetorical I won't say trick I would say squalid manoeuvre that underlies it to hear him speak you would think would you not that he was a pacifist that he defines himself as anti-war now how can this be said in good conscience by someone who has just standing by the side of the dictator of Syria on the 30th of July referred to the 154 heroic operations conducted in Iraq by the so called resistance or resistance that's run as we know by a senior bin Laden mist and by many of the former secret police of the Baathist regime how can someone say and say they're anti-war and they care about casualties that they praise 154 operations a day hundred forty I ask you 145 he's coming down a bit it's not that let me in let me what some of those operations were the blowing up by military-grade explosives of the headquarters of the United Nations in Baghdad a few months after the intervention as it was being chanted by Sergio de Mello one of the great international civil servants of our time who was fresh from ami knows more about this deny but fresh from his role in the very belated supervision of the independence of East Timor from Indonesia and the whole team of free election in East Timor and the jihadists who murdered him put out a communique saying we have today put an end to the life of this disgusting man because he freed Timor from Muslim holy land in Indonesia these people are not pacifists ladies and gentlemen nor are they anti-imperialists if you haven't noticed they call for the restoration of a lost Empire the Caliphate and the imposition of Sharia law on all non-believers within its borders that's not pacifism that's not answering period ISM and to praise the people who do this [Applause] [Music] - Sully the name of Charles James Fox ladies and gentlemen with such a squad with such a squad enterprise of brigandage and conquest is truly revolting it's almost as funny as Michael Moore saying that the brazuca we are resistance in Iraq is for him the same as the Minutemen of the American Revolution there comes a point and I think it's come by now where what people say is self discrediting requires no more comment from me some of this is funny okay some of it simply shows that the people on the other side of this house are not serious the cheap laugh and the easy joke will do for them of course it's funny that the author s of The Vagina Monologues puts mr. Galloway on the campaign trail with Jane Fonda who can't laugh at that I know I know a number of women who can't wait people Huston Oh mr. Galloway to hear a woman talk back to him in any way at all but the seriousness of it can't be concealed now among the people killed by these heroic operations in Iraq some of them run from Syria and paid for by the human toothbrush and slobbering dopher Assad mr. Galloway's new pal among the victims of these of these operations was specialist K Casey Sheehan who was trying to clean up the festering slum of what had once been called Saddam City and was now known to us as Sava city where the water supply is coming back on it's taking a while because people keep blowing it up but it's coming back on now I will put a simple moral proposition to you and see if I phrased it a right is it not rather revolting to appear in Damascus by the side of our side and to praise the people who killed Casey Sheehan and then to come to America and appeal to the emotions of his mother [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I I say sincerely I didn't think it could get as low as that and yes I did criticize the luckless mrs. Chiam because she had made a very unfortunate political statement suggesting that she agreed with mr. bin Laden that George Bush was the murderer of her son which is not the son the son you exculpate the murderer you X still picked the killers right there they didn't kill him shame on you shame on you for saving her now she had made an unfortunate statement which I called her on and she denied having made it which is false claim and she said that someone else had magically inserted into her email which was at claim equally found to be false all of these claims ladies and gentlemen can be found to be false my moments checking if you really believe the crazed fabricated fabrication of the figures of a hundred thousand deaths in Iraq and if you think that only people who died in Iraq excuse me but the only deaths caused in Iraq are by coalition forces feel willing to believe any or all of that you can simply go to my colleague Fred captain's space on Slate comm he's a very stern and strong critic of the war a great opponent of mine we've had quite a poll about it he's a great sign a writer about science and other matters it's a simple matter to show this is politicized hat work of the worst kind of Statistics in that in that case have been conclusively and absolutely shown to be false and I invite anyone to check it everything I say everything I say has at least ten pages of documentation which I'm willing to share behind it and you will have your chance to challenge me and ask questions to Amy now I believe that that's really all I particularly need to say except no clap that fast that's cruel that's mean except to say this about the question of who's who in this war Iraq is not being occupied by Preston tau Kearney present Sullivan Lee was born they said to move a few times he's seen his villages destroyed and his home bombed and his family shot at and murdered so he's not occupying Iraq president Talabani is in fact a leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan which is the corresponding member organization of the socialist international it is the Iraqi member party of the socialist international the Iraqi Communist Party a party with the great record of bad politics but good civil struggle in Iraq and with great organization among the women and trade unionists and journalists and workers of the country has of course been a member already of the provisional government it is campaigning enthusiastically in the elections there probably some people among you here in fancy yourself as having leftist revolutionary credentials in fact I can tell that you do from the zoo noises you make and the cigars you can demonstrate from your long underground Twilight Struggle against Dick Cheney but while you're masturbating in that manner the Iraqi secular left the socialist and communist movements the workers movement the trade unions are fighting for their lives against the most vicious and indiscriminate form of fascist violence in any country in the region has seen for a very long time and the full intent of that the full intent of that was and I'll say it yes yes in Fallujah was to establish a Taliban regime and and and a safe house for al-qaeda recruit that's what we were facing you think you could fight that without casualties you're irresponsible you're a historical we take on this side of the house without conditions we take our side with the struggle of the Iraqi Democratic and secular left against fascism we make no apology those who have betrayed their own party mr. Galloway had to be expelled from the great labor movement of which I was myself still a member because of advocating the shooting publicly advocating jihad against British troops now turns on the Iraqi Left who wishes them well as they had wishes and argues and hopes for their defeat by an onslaught which would make Afghanistan seem like a civilised country what two positions can one take about this I invite you to consider ladies and gentlemen and can consider carefully and thank you [Applause] I wanted to see if we could get some wind screens on the microphones here but failing that if you could just lower your microphone mr. Galloway so that you don't speak right into it great ten minutes George Galloway crazed fabrications Johns Hopkins University and The Lancet the Journal of the British Medical Association are engaged in crazed fabrications politicized fabrication isn't but no crazed fabrications you said but isn't crazed well is there anybody really in this hall who believes that johns we don't know what you're supposed to believe yet you think one of the you think that the academics from one of the world's finest universities in your own country are crazed fabricators you think that The Lancet the Journal of the British Medical Association are crazed fabricators I mean how far I mean how far how far how far has this neocon rot seeped into your souls now I'm going to have to deal with this hypocrite Hitchens he talks about the death of soldiers in an occupation army at the hands of those resisting them he supported the Algerian resistance in its battle against French occupation which cost a million lives and he supported the FLN who conducted the most bitter unremitting unrelenting military struggle which would today be described and was then by the French described as terrorist and when I met ben bella the leader of the Algerian revolution was asked why he was placing bombs in baby carriages and leaving them in the soup to explode amongst the French forces and their collaborators he answered if the French will give us some of their helicopters some of their aeroplanes we will give them our baby carriages isn't that the same situation today that mr. hitchens friends are the ones with all the tomahawks all the Apaches isn't it odd that they should choose as the names of their weapons the totems of the Native American population that they were mercilessly massacred in centuries gone by the Iraqi people have only themselves with which to fight this foreign occupation this hypocrite crying tears for the American army in Iraq supported the struggle of the Vietnamese people from the first to the last as they killed 58,000 American soldiers in Vietnam he opposed the American war in Vietnam and supported those fighting against it today he supports the American occupation of Iraq and seeks to slander those fighting against it now there are al-qaeda elements in Iraq whose fault is that who brought them there how did they end up in Iraq there were no al-qaeda in Iraq before bush and Blair attacked it and know every Islamist in the world his either on his way or dreaming of being on his way descending like spores of anthrax on the gaping wounds in Iraq created by your war and I'll tell you what they'll then spill around the world spreading their jihad exactly as his new or rather old friends in Afghanistan did the Arab Afghans who were sent by the American administration to Afghanistan in the 1980s became al Qaeda in the 1990s and into the 21st century so mr. Hitchens policy has succeeded in making 10,000 new bin Laden's he and his friend or Avada have deeper didn't mean to do it have deepened the swamp really did not hatred out of which these Islamist fundamentalists are climbing you see well somebody laughs you may think that those aeroplanes in this city on 9/11 came out of a clear blue sky I believe they emerged out of a swamp of hatred created by us I believe I believe [Applause] I believe I believe I believe that by I believe I believe I believe please please please I believe because that by their unending bottomless and total support for general Sharon's crimes against the Palestinian people the United States I don't think I don't think your I don't think your new friends are quite as keen on the Palestinians as you once were Christopher I believe I believe that by propping up by propping up the puppet presidents and the corrupt kings who ruled the Muslim world almost without exception from one end to the other Western policy has created this swamp of hatred against us and it won't matter it won't matter how many fly swats we invest in how many Patriot Act's we pass how many anti-terrorist measures we pass if you live beside a swamp no amount of fly swats will protect you from the monsters who will come out of that swamp we have to drain that swamp by stopping that support for Sharon's Israel is apartheid wall his crimes against the palace we are [Applause] not about many supporters of the Palestinians in your ranks tonight mr. Hitchens I think unless we stop propping up these dictators in the Muslim world none of whom would last five minutes if it were not for the military political and financial support of countries like yours and mine unless we stop invading and occupying Arab and Muslim countries then we will be forced to endure the atrocities that took place in New York on 9/11 and in London on seven seven over and over again so if I can't reach your heart let me at least reach your head in your own interest try the war America's own interests revenge your policy towards Israel and Palestine reverse your policy towards dictators in the Muslim world reverse your policy towards war and occupation and we can all be safer [Applause] christopher hitchens five minutes oh I had no idea that was the appeal to the cerebellum that last bit was there well okay you'll forgive me for pausing I was waiting for the next shoe to drop now I'm beginning to find myself a little overwhelmed by mr. Galloway's compliments I did well he keeps coming up with them from it's true he did once say of me that I was the greatest living English man of letters and polemicist and I was grateful I could have wished it wasn't published in a newspaper nostalgic for the rule of Brezhnev but you take your compliments where you can and I might add that if anything ignited the hatred and violence that has so come to preoccupy us in the Muslim world I think the invasion by the Soviet Union of the entire territory of Afghanistan it's virtual annexation as a country and the certifiable and provable massacre of many tens of thousands of Afghans as well as the insult to their religion is probably a better candidate than the holding of a free election in Iraq as a provocation but you see there will always be bloody fools you think yes of course now you look at the situation in Gaza it makes perfect sense to commandeer a planeload of civilians and smash it into a building full of civilians why haven't I thought of that before I think you may have noticed mr. Galloway you picked the wrong City to say that in [Applause] and arguably and arguably the wrong month as well because some of us are still mourning some of us are still mourning please please please some of us are still mourning a mother among other things the the the very large number of the very large number the very large number of Americans of all faiths including very many Arabs and Muslims who were killed in that disgusting atrocity and when you say if we don't mend our ways this will happen to us again if you weren't an ally of Saddam Hussein and and Bashar al-assad if you had not been an ally of the preachers of the preachers of hatred and subversion in the region how dare you say the United States supports the Assad regime in Syria you you say that that I have no brief for the Bush administration in this but it's seems to me bizarre that someone should say fresh from the podium with Bashar Assad the United States supports all the dictators in the region what is this we have in concert for once I must say with the French succeeded in gaining some part of the recovery of the autonomy of Lebanon which was under under of most corrupt and brutal and illegal Syrian occupation and the leader of the Lebanon Socialist Party whose father was murdered by Assad and the leader of the Lebanese Communist Party whose father was murdered last month by this Assad and all others hailed it as a liberation and you say it's like the French taking over Algeria this is piffle sinister piffle the French claim in Algeria was that Algeria was part of France Algeria Francaise we do not say Iraq America Iraq Anglais we judge later Leon Acosta which it might be if certain numbers of no I watch I'll block that metaphor I came very close there it's also I think a bit much to be told that these al-qaida chaps these killers and sadists and nihilists and producers of indiscriminate explosions wouldn't be this way if we weren't so mean to them now it's true some of them mr. Sarkar we their leader of core the bin Laden is leader was in Iraq before it was well known to have been in Iraq under the rule Saddam Hussein I can tell you that no one gets in out of Iraq at that level without the president knowing so true that a group affiliated with him the Ansar al-islam a fundamentalist group thought that its main job was to kill the Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq the elected leadership was a strange target I think for a holy war and it's also true that some of them came to Iraq after we threw them out of Afghanistan well that's easy then leave them in control of Afghanistan don't mess around with these people don't make them angry don't make them mean it's your fault now this is masochism but it's being offered to you I say this and someone who hasn't answered my question but my challenge I said in round terms when I opened there this is not just a matter of which of us can be the rudest because I've already conceded that's mr. Galloway or which of us can be the most cerebral because he's already conceded that to me but I said that there's a further grudge between us which is this I say that mr. Galloway discussed the allocation of oil-for-food profits that stole directly from the iraqi people and that helped to corrupt this scheme and program of the united nations i say he discussed that personally with mr. Tariq Aziz in Baghdad at least once and if he will put his name to an affidavit that formally denies that we can have done with this business but if he does not it's going to haunt him all over every stop of this tour and all the way back to England and everywhere he goes to raise the flag of jihad in the Middle East this I promise what I promise you George Galloway five minutes a complete lie it's a lie like the other lies on your leaflets that you are handing out like an idiot on the street before this meeting it's a lie by my book if you don't want to buy it go to the website of respect coalition dot org and read it I've already dealt with this it's a lie nobody ever discussed oil allocations with me not Tariq Aziz not anybody I've already said it under oath never mind an affidavit under oath on pain of imprisonment in front of the US Senate well that smokescreen will not wash you want me to run through the dictatorships you're supporting do you want me to Roger yes why not that is masochism that really is masochism you want me to run through the dictatorship Arabia just get on with it no want me to deal with the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia the prison state told me to run through the family business more Colleoni than Sainsbury's that runs Kuwait do you want me to run through the dictatorship in Egypt he has the gall to claim the election in Egypt as a fruit of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq Hosni Mubarak got more votes in the so-called free election last week then he got in the election he admitted he rigged six years previously and you want to call that democracy you talk about democracy in Lebanon your cedar revolution it wasn't democracy they were demanding in the square of the Cedar Revolution if there was democracy in Lebanon Sheikh nasrallah the leader of Hezbollah would be the president of Lebanon but he can't be very interesting it can't be the president of Lebanon no Muslim can be the president of Lebanon you've got to be a Christian to be the president of Lebanon even though only 20% of the population of Lebanon our Christians and how did that come about because the United States Marines waded ashore in Beirut in 1958 to impose that Constitution on the people of Lebanon you have the goal to talk about dictatorship and democracy mr. Hitchens your and you have the goal to talk about corruption in the Middle East your president and his father are complicit to the tune of millions and millions of pounds in the corruption of the Arabian Gulf in Saudi Arabia with the Carlyle Group with secret Saudi investment in the failed business enterprises of george w bush and you a former Trotskyist wrote in the newspapers that you are backing the reelection of george w bush dick cheney donald rumsfeld and the rest of this gang you should be ashamed of yourself but you're not but you're not but but you're not ashamed of yourself at all it's true I praised you you were a butterfly you know a slug you did right like an angel but you're no working for the devil and damn you and all your works well that concludes the first part of this debate now it'll be a little more freewheeling I asked you I asked you not to speak over each other but you can go back and forth more I'd like you each to think of a question you'd like to ask the other but I'd like to start by asking Christopher Hitchens you began today by talking about the evils of Saddam Hussein that though was not the main argument of President Bush and invading Iraq it was weapons of mass destruction and links to al-qaeda would you say that he engaged in systematic campaign to deceive the American people and the world it's your first point you see the butt used to be said I will Bush only in the first go for verse senior he only cared about the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait didn't care about the Iraqi people or the Kurds he only pretended to and the UN resolutions only allowed him to do Kuwait and fair enough but so whatever you do you're going to be accused of not giving out your full agenda so I don't feel myself particularly wrong by that point in his address to United Nations in fact the first address on the subject the president did mention a full menu as you might say of indictment against Iraq which included or I should say rather the the Baathist dictatorship which included its record of genocide it's proven record of deception about weapons of mass destruction its links with terrorism and his violation of all the UN resolutions governing these things I have written that I think both Mr Blair and mr. Bush insulted not just their own electorates but everyone in the world by preferring to shall we say frightened people preferring to frighten dementia education or enlighten them and I've written that repeatedly I believe it very much I think a good course has been gravely disfigured by that by those political deformities but if you will let allow me to say sir I mean just as I am not personally responsible for creating 100,000 al Qaeda fighters nor am I here as someone who can answer questions on behalf of the Bush administration rather to the contrary the it's it's it's a a single issue question with me I think that the president was right to do what the previous president and vice president mr. Clinton and mr. Gore had only promised to do and what the United States Senate had only voted to do which was to move Iraq into the post Saddam Hussein era well all that was decided and repeatedly promised by the preceding administration and by the US Senate when George Bush was still a provincial governor of Texas so I don't think this is a subject that can be changed just by saying Dick Cheney and knowing that they're enough morons who will always blue when you say that now I'm but you see I'm a bit of a comet Church alarmed in the last moment so I'm not certain that the plain meaning of words as uttered by me is being understood by the audience because if they understood me to say that I favored the royal family of Saudi Arabia to any point I apologize I'm sure I didn't say that and then think anything I said could be construed to mean it when I said I supported Siyad a Deen Ibrahim the moral leader of the Egyptian opposition who was in Mubarak's jail I don't believe I gave an endorsement of mr. Mubarak mr. Galloway appears to think that anything will do here and beneath each gutter there's another gutter gurgling away underneath but I would rather to debate this question on its so to say merits and demerits now just on this point of weaponry um if you have as you do have in the case of Saddam Hussein's Iraq a regime that has used chemical and biological weapons against some of its own inhabitants in Kurdistan against Iran several times that hasn't had run an elaborate method of concealment that offered mr. Tareq Aziz mr. Galloway's best friend I think he told the Senate for a Senate subcommittee and he said best friend or very close friend man he's met 12 times spent Christmas with mr. cherrick Aziz has offered when I have an affidavit on this and we will get one from mr. Galloway to have put the two together the UN chief inspector for Iraq was offered two million dollars in internal Ghazis of his face-to-face to change his inspections we knew that we knew that dummy sites will run up for you and fools to inspect and we know that material was buried and moved and we know that scientists were terrorized and told their families would be lavishly killed if they cooperated with an inspection on this knowledge of which I'm sorry to say I am the prisoner I cannot not know this any more than I could not know that it sanam was trying to buy weapons off the shelf from North Korea on the basis of this establish able provable knowledge who is going to say well let's give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt if he says he's not fooling around with weapons now what responsible leader of any democracy could face his people later if that bet turned out to be wrong and say well I had every reason to think he was on the level come on get real be serious on this and your response to : Powell's saying that his UN speech was sustained his record your response to : powell saying that his UN speech making the case of weapons of mass destruction was a stain on his record just a minute responsive mm I don't give a damn what Colin Powell thinks about anything I never have and I never will I think I've noticed that he's repeat having been for a long time the most overrated probably favored the United States he's running for the nomination to ever most overrated man in the world but I don't really care and you don't make me George Galloway Saddam Hussein currently sits in jail do you think he has committed any crimes and if so what Saddam Hussein committed real and serious crimes against the people of Iraq most of them in the 1980s when he was the closest friend of the United States and Great Britain [Applause] he he invaded Iran at the behest of the United States and Britain in a war which killed a million people on either side a war in which chemical and biological weapons were used by both sides sold to both sides by countries like Britain America and West Germany he he killed massacred Kurdish people in Halabja I was one of those who demonstrated against it mister Tony Blair nor any of his cabinet participated in any of those demonstrations because then the Baathist regime in Iraq against whom I was resolutely and actively involved were the best friends and customers of the then allies United States and the United Kingdom Saddam created a killing field in Iraq like all dictatorships he one of the go billion tricks the Hitchens has performed this evening with his little leaflet is to try to give you the impression that in my book I'm not the only one I come out in favor of Saddam Hussein and in fact I denounce him in the most withering terms but you wouldn't get that from the leaflet that Hitchens has given out this evening so not only do I think that Saddam Hussein committed real and serious crimes against the Iraqi people I said so at the time he was committing them I was denounced for saying so at the time he was committing them as a communist troublemaker disrupting the profitable relations between era and Britain um Amy sorry I have to I know we're supposed to take it in order but I think I think you would think less of me ladies and gentlemen if I had never apply to that I'll respond to you they see what's by all means let's see how this goes mr. Galloway claims that at a certain period in the 1980s he was supporting Iraqi Democrats and protesting against Saddam Hussein knowing what he was capable of knowing what he had done knowing the genocide for example committed in in Kurdistan and knowing of the aggressions and the chemical weaponry that had been deployed in Ronny says he knows that I've had the opportunity to check with the woman and Chloe and this very distinguished member of the Labour left in the British Parliament who was the chairman of the relevant organization the campaign for the restoration of democratic rights in Iraq she says she has no memory of mr. Galloway's participation but let's say that we take his word for it it means that when he went having said that he thought that Kuwait was part of the Iraqi mother Latin to greet Saddam Hussein in 1994 in Iraq and to salute him for his courage that's another reason to fatigability went he went and and to take his side again it meant that he went in foot on his own evidence he went in full knowledge of the fact that he was dealing with a murderer and a monster and a dictator so the the pit of exculpation that you attempt to dig mr. Galloway has just swallowed you up and the record will show it yep but George coughs ooh but but you opposed the war in 1991 in the full knowledge of what had happened at Halabja just three years before you're the one who went on television denouncing President Bush for his plan to invade and destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein you are the one who did I saw you with my own eyes yes I saw your lips moving I was there too I saw the words tumble out yo yo keep your wig on you told heston name four countries around the country of Iraq that you're so keen to attack you were in completely full knowledge even better knowledge because it was even fresh out in 1991 the nature of the Saddam regime but you were against the invasion of Iraq in 1991 presumably because you calculated the attempt at dictatorship in one country in the Arab world was one thing unleashing the right of big superpowers to invade and occupy other people's countries without legal authority without judicial permission of the authorities political and legal in the world was an even bigger danger even bigger danger I was a I was a small fry in 1991 nobody in America was watching me on television as I was watching you on television in America and cheering you for your four sightedness for your wisdom for your subtlety annoying doesn't get it done sometimes in life you have to choose between bad and badder sometimes in life you have to choose between evil and more evil that's what you did in 1991 the only difference between us is that on the road somewhere Damascus I would say yeah I don't know where be careful I don't know what it was well there was vanity fair' or whether it was the lucrative contracts that you've landed since but somehow you decided in 2003 maybe it was the whiskey maybe it was the whiskey somehow you decided in 2003 to take a line that was the complete opposite of the line you used to take now you want us to gloss over that point you say well it's what yes you did you said I can't understand why I was devoted to this point were you lying then in 91 or are you lying now were you wrong in 91 or are you wrong now if you were wrong in 91 how should we believe you're right now in 2005 if you're capable of such drastic dramatic erratic swings from being in favor of a devastating war to be against the devastating war to being in favor of the liberation struggle in Algeria and Vietnam and Ireland but against the liberation struggle now in Palestine and Iraq if your liberation struggle as such drummer instrument that you used earlier crazed shifts of opinion how can anybody take you seriously and what do I got a question image again I am Christopher Hitchens again I worry about the plain meaning of words I believe I said earlier that I held a different view of the time and has since changed it my articles and statements against the war my reports from Iraq and its neighbors at the time are all available in a in a book published by verso it's called some this one is called for the sake of argument and I haven't repudiated them it's they no longer hold to them and I was unpersuaded in the following manner I was persuading I don't have the education to work that one out I was unpersuaded in the following manner I I ended the war I ended the war in northern Iraq where I saw what the real consequences of Saddam Hussein's rule had been I knew something about it there's no question but I wasn't prepared to be told by so many people that in their view the American intervention had saved their lives than the lives of their families and I I hadn't got a clever anti-war argument to make to that point and I began a process of re-examination of which I can't really say or be expected to say that I'm ashamed you're right I had some fun at the expense of Charlton Heston I mean I can remember it too when I asked him what the neighboring countries were he said Bahrain which is of course an island and it was all good sport and I'm not ashamed of any of that either but there comes a point when you've got to be a little more serious now the fact is there was no evasion by George Bush of Iraq nor was there any UN mandate to do so I'm talking about 1990 I wasn't an invasion of her own it was an expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait by coalition which included even Syria now if mr. Assad can change his mind on this and I can and many other people - I suppose we have to congratulate you on being absolutely 100% consistent in your support for unmentionable thugs and criminals [Applause] what about the issue of a timetable withdrawing from Iraq or withdrawing immediately or not withdrawing let me first put the question to George Galloway what do you think needs to happen today mr. Hitchens says that you have no intention of Iraq Americana well if it looks like a duck walks like a duck and quacks like a duck the chances are it probably is a duck and down on the ground in Iraq it doesn't look much like the United States is planning to leave of their own volition after all they're building massive and what they hope to be permanent military bases to stationed their forces there they have engineered a puppet regime which they intend to allow to be a kind of lipstick on the ugly face of their occupation which will allow their corporate friends do I really need to mention them do I need to name them do I really need to me they've probably got supporters in the hall right as well Christopher's new best friends best tell and Halliburton and all these robber barons these vulture capitalists who are cutting Iraq like a shawarma stealing the American people's money stealing the Iraqi people's money you think they're planning on going home anytime soon of their own volition think Halliburton intends to leave do you think they're plans to force the privatization of all of Iraq's industries and services are because they intend to allow Iraq to be free do you think they're forcing of Iraqi farmers to buy patented seeds so that they'll be forever in debt to the agribusiness companies of the United States is because they ever allow intend to allow Iraq to be free they intend if they can to have an Iraq Emira konna but the Iraqis have decided otherwise and that's what you can't stand that's what you can't stand you see you slander the Iraqi resistance as being foreign fighter I have to laugh at this term foreign fighters yeah which part of Iraq is general Myers from which parts of Iraq are the British and American generals from the most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms in Iraq but the idea the idea that the Iraqi resistance are foreigners or Islamist fundamentalists is denied now even by the testimony of the United States generals themselves Hitchens is clinging to an argument which has even been abandoned by the United States generals themselves only six percent according to the United States government of prisoners taken from amongst the Iraqi resistance have been foreigners if Arabs from neighboring Arab countries can be called foreigners by a government in the United States of America that means that 94% of them are Iraqis now you should know better you see we were told in Vietnam that if if only the right Chinese and the Soviet Union would stop meddling in Vietnam there would be no Vietnamese resistance they couldn't bear to concede that the Vietnamese people were prepared to fight them with their teeth if necessary to rid their country of foreign domination they've told us in every single anti-colonial struggle that it was foreign interference it was the raids or it's the Islamists from outside if only we could extirpate them kapow the man in a turban with a beard in the Tora Bora or his lieutenant Azhar Cowie who it turns out actually fell out with bin Laden a very long time ago according to the excellent rebuttal of mr. Hitchens ten points by a professor one called a Michigan University available on the Internet yes to anyone who wants to read a man even more cerebral than Christopher Hitchens this slander of the Iraqi resistance is self-deluding you're fooling yourselves if you believe it because if you believe it you must believe that if only you could seal the borders a bit more pony you could get rid of the foreign fighters then everything would be rosy everything would be hunky-dory this is a level of self delusion which borders frankly on the racist the vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the American and British occupation of their country your own friend Coburn writing from Iraq recently said so the vast majority of Iraqis want this occupation to end sure and the vast majority of those fighting to bring it to an end our Iraqis get used to get over understanding or you're fooling yourselves Oh George Galloway with one word do you think the US and British forces should be withdrawn immediately not only do I only a word okay Chris Christopher Hitchens when do you think the US troops should leave Iraq I think I can be as precise there perhaps not as terse as mr. Galloway on this point and I should thank him by the way for eliciting or allowing allowing me to elicit or you perhaps later gentleman to elicit from him what I feared didn't hope in other words a full declaration of support for the campaign of sabotage and murder and beheading that has taken the lives of brave journalists demolished demolish the offices demolish the offices demolish the offices of the United Nations which you will knock down shot down senior clerics outside their places of worship and continues as a campaign of mayhem to this day I don't know yet will be which you will not sink you've fallen out of the night you might all care to remember you've fallen out of the gutter into the sewer you might all care to remember that you are being televised ladies and gentlemen I trust your mother's and not watching your shouting at me down so I can answer the question you unclear on the concept I will proceed if I'm allowed to but I'm just reminding you you're on telly okay just hope your friends and relatives aren't watching now a campaign a campaign a campaign of mayhem and sabotage that was most obviously directed here's where what it moved to my point in February last against the only attempt that Iraq has ever seen to hold a national election to provide a parliament Constitution and an elected government now what are the odds do you think that those who are blowing up the offices of the UN and who recently shot down as senior Sunni cleric in Baghdad because he too wants an end to the occupation but he asked his congregation to vote in the upcoming elections what are the odds that these people represent the secret silent majority in Iraq as say the FLN did in Algeria well that's just do some simple relatively simple arithmetic in the three Kurdish provinces of Iraq there is really not a single sympathizer either of the birth party of al-qaeda it can be taken as a certainty that's we know at least 20% of the population consider this resistance to be a fascist pest and have committed their heroic armed forces because there is a rebel army in Iraq there is a People's Army there is a guerrilla force in or it's called the Peshmerga it's the people's the People's Liberation Army of Palestine and it fights on our side and we at last because mr. Galloway is right that our policy in the past has been heinous we at last fight on their side - excellent now very well moving right along it is admitted I don't think it's even denied by the egregious a figure of a professor Cole who's never set foot in the region though claims to speak Farsi and various other languages I don't believe it's denied even by him and he changes his mind on these things about once a week that Ayatollah Sistani Grand Ayatollah Sistani is considered by the majority of the iraqi shiaa to be this let's say at least their spiritual leader if it had been up to Grand Ayatollah Sistani and if you like if it had been up to my advice to mr. Paul Bremer would have had to call elections much earlier than he did and so he should have done and make a transfer of sovereignty much sooner than he did and so he should have done but we have no reason to doubt that the forces that favor this transition to a federal democratic system in Iraq where no one group rules by violence or terror or by dictatorship where there is federal and local autonomy and where disputes are not settled by us is favored by the latent majority of the Iraqi people because if that's not so it's very easy for them to participate in the version and what they do instead is they try and sabotage it I think that's a very eloquent campaign that's being run by mr. Galloway's heroic resistance now to stop these elections from happening to speak to the people the terrified people have been through three and a half decades of war and fascism and terror and never give them a moment to breathe never give them a moment's freedom from fear and intimidation shame on the people shame on the people who call this a liberation movement christopher hitchens what about the costs of this war at home I've just come from New Orleans across the political spectrum you're hearing more and more dissent and criticism of what's happening in Iraq because of what didn't happen in New Orleans the lack of National Guard and Mississippi and Louisiana the weapons rather the vehicles that were needed that weren't there so two questions on that what about the cost here at home with the Hurricane Katrina and the lack of response and if the we see clearly because the reporters are unembarrassed in New Orleans and they really presented the pictures if we see clearly the way the u.s. responded here in terms of rebuilding or not what makes you think the u.s. is any better in Iraq I would caution people from adopting a zero-sum mentality in this respect I had the opportunity to speak with a close associate of Lieutenant General Steve Brown some time ago said that he had before the situation became as dire as it did had been able to call up at the Secretary of Defense and say I have 200,000 troops you can have any time but the question is where's the order going to come from the president can't as you know ami cannot order American troops into action in the State of the Union he has to be asked by the governor for this to happen and the governor has to admit well I'm sorry it's in the Constitution I'm sorry it's in the Constitution it is in the Constitution unless you want to Iraq unless you want unless you want to invoke the insurrection Act which hasn't been I think invoked and since the Civil War so the the fact of the matter is that were more than enough soldiers they just weren't given the orders in time and that's a matter of fuse but as soon as they made their appearance didn't everything start to look a lot better aren't you proud of general Honore are you not proud that that a man born into that a man born into segregation and discrimination is leading really hard professional tough generous brave men and women in uniform for the recovery of new orleans and all the time has a son in Fallujah and seems to think he can manage both I think it's hugely to the credit of the United States Armed Forces that they would consider it ignoble to abandon their commitments in Sadr City and in Halabja and elsewhere ignoble and parochial and provincial now mr. Galloway came a little near the knuckle a moment ago and decided to overlook it he said what I said was bordering on racist I really feel I'm entitled to ask him to withdraw that imputation I think that's an appropriate thing to say but I will have to add that for people to start pumping out propaganda before the bodies had even been uncovered in New Orleans saying and to make points demagogic often saying they wouldn't be dead if they weren't black about people haven't been identified yet whose parents don't know where they are and just say this wouldn't have happened if we weren't wasting money on Arabs that that is an appeal to the most base provincial isolationist and chauvinist mentality [Applause] [Applause] you're on TV Galloway you're on me I'm I'm so glad mr. Hitchens gave that and so you see this is where it ends in there you start off being the liberal mouthpiece of one of the most reactionary governments this country has ever seen on the subject of war you see you've got your own liberal reasons for doing so and you end up an apologist and a mouthpiece for those miserable malevolent incompetence who couldn't even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans in the aftermath of a hurricane that's where it ends Hitchens that's where it ends you end up you end up a mouthpiece and an apologist for the Bush family whose matriarch you want to talk about racism one of our Barbara Bush one of our Barbara Bush who took a look at the poor huddled masses in the Astrodome and told us they'd never had it so good who told us they were better off than they'd ever been underprivileged people know in an Astrodome the only problem with whom she said was that so many of them wanted to stay in Texas you know hitchens you're a court jester you're a court jester [Music] not not at Camelot like other ridiculous former liberals before you but at the court of the Bourbon bushes Barbara Bush the Marie Antoinette of modern-day American politics well I think I have to say a quick word ma if I maybe this is all good knockabout stuff but um I must say mrs. Bush senior does remind me of I think it was Lady Diana Cooper who was once stopped outside um Claridge's Hotel in London as she was waiting under the umbrella for the day Mila to be brought round after a ball ragged man approached her and said now he said I haven't eaten for three days she said we were very foolish then he was trying if necessary he was forced to yourself if necessary it's called a tumbrel remark in some circles um yes I don't know where the Marie Antoinette cake shop was in the Astrodome but a few noticed I don't I didn't say that I defended the president's record on this and I've written very critically about it already for all of you to read in Slate Magazine what I did what I will not have said what I will not have said is that we should go to a refugee woman in Biloxi and say to her do you realize the Arabs have stolen the money that should have come to you and we have note we have no right to put the poor against each other in that way and to betray our internationalism well we have no right whatever to to to insult to insult the tremendous performance of the United States Armed Forces once they're put into action and I will add one more thing the 82nd airborne and the first Air Cavalry so far from our being distracted by Iraq have learned in Iraq matters of civil reconstruction water distribution purification crunch over that have been extremely useful to them in New Orleans the case the case don't G I would advise you not to jeer these men and women while you're being televised ladies and gentlemen I would advise you not to do it the shame is yours I'm awfully sorry I meant to have said that before in any place yes and we will bring Sadr City back to and we will rebuild her Lovejoy yes we will and not only that the Army Corps of Engineers the Army Corps of Engineers has just finished building a new extension of the Kabul to Kandahar Highway in Afghanistan that's what the Army Corps of Engineers did which means that the journeys between several major cities in Afghanistan which used to take days over rocky and dangerous which are now much easier and a triumph of humanism has occurred if I was the last patient person I would get the impression that someone was trying to shut me up here don't even think about it what I say what I say doesn't require your endorsement and isn't drowned by your zoo noises because I'm on c-span now and all they can hear is you paying they can make me out all right so just give it up okay simmer down or let me put it like this it takes a bit more than that it takes a bit more than that tough guys and gals just shot me up as well now you might the word warlord is quite often used when we discuss Afghanistan which the country would haven't talked about enough whereas I say the Taliban would still be in power if the anti-war movements advice have been heeded what is a warlord award is someone who can control a piece of road by force who can with a few brigands roll a rock into that road and say you don't pass without paying tribute to me a warlordism is one of the seed beds of the swamp that mr. Galloway describes that breeds terrorism if you can build solid wide roads that directly connect the cities you abolish brigandage in watery are you in favor of abandoning Afghanistan's rule or warlords and brigand Riya ghin and see what happens I do I heard a few yeses I thought I might well you may be consider carefully what you may be demanding I think it is a most excellent use of our Army Corps of Engineers to help liberate Afghanistan and its neighbors from that kind of journey I also think perhaps who would be ignoble to add this it is not without a dimension that involves our own self-interest because we do indeed know the swamp from which the enemy first came and this is what it means to drain it that and swatting the mosquitoes I'll have to add killing them in other words poisoning them putting them down knowing an enemy when we see one treating an enemy like an enemy recognizing that we have a deadly foe not surrendering not surrendering at the invitation of a courtier of sadists I'm not a member of the bush entourage ha I've never appeared on a public platform with a dictator I never have and I never will I couldn't face you if I had that on my radar it must be some sordid kind of displaced guilt that makes mr. Galloway want to throw out accusations like this I've never done that and to come fresh from embracing these blood-stained bastards and to say to you it's your fault that these people here are Caesars more than we should be expected to take before before you each give your closing five minutes I wanted to ask each of you Christopher Hitchens and then I'll ask you a question about the media George Galloway but Christopher Hitchens as you've changed your views over time do you feel that the media is friendlier to you I'm just trying to think no I have I have I was a columnist for say Vanity Fair which is what I think where most of my readers following my staff before I resigned from the nation for example and I still it doesn't well get that job by quitting the nation I have a feeling I know the imputation of what you're saying but I think I probably wouldn't be the best judge in my own cause I can see the editor of the Nation magazine sitting in the front row I feel fairly confident that if you asked him he would not say that I left the nation in order to improve my salary prospects but and I frankly think that's a bit of a waste of a question but if from [Applause] plainly plainly if the impression I give is of someone who is a mercenary and actually a bad at handling money as that it's an impression I wouldn't be able to correct by denying it that was a grabber whisky an answer well I don't know about you MA but I'm beginning to think this debate is running out of steam a little yes I have the same impression if if mr. Hitchens agrees it might be that we should begin to think about winding it up without further ado I see some of the audience are leaving the hour as late and I think we've generated about as much light as we're going to and as much heat as we ought to well because mr. Hitchens is right I'm certainly no pacifist and neither is he and we probably oughtn't to get any more belligerent towards each other than we have no you don't worry about that all right why don't we give why don't you give each other if I still have the mic I would just like to say that this issue of whether the Iraq war was necessary and just or not is one which is already being adjudicated upon by the people who are watching c-span by the people who read these proceedings this evening in their opinion polls in their comments of all kinds there are very very few friends left of the argument that mr. Hitchens has put of course on the far shores of the crazed right-wing neocon circles in the United States he's a new hero but amongst the mainstream majority and amongst those with whom mr. Hitchens used to travel this subject is already adjudged you see the Elysian Fields that he seeks to conjure up in his depiction of Iraq today simply don't bear any resemblance to the situation we all see on our television screens and read about in our newspapers every day the situation is not getting better in Iraq it's getting worse religious fundamentalism to which he is so opposed has been put in power in Iraq by the invasion of bush and Blair they [Music] the the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-sistani of whom mr. Hitchens now it's very bizarre a Trotskyist friend of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-sistani that he speaks so approvingly of now is the ruling power in Iraq and believe me he is an Islamic fundamentalist believe me he wants to ensure that the people who live under his purview follow every dot and , of the Islamic fundamentalist agenda and I warn you to be careful of what you wish for because if either of the United States or its friend Israel attacks Iran in the next period over the issue of nuclear power Iran will answer in Iraq and they will answer above all in the south of Iraq we are the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-sistani is top dog thanks to your friends bush and Blair extremism has not been dampened down by this war it has been fantastically enhanced the number of people who hate us in the world has not been reduced but has been greatly enlarged the confidence of people in their own governments and their own political systems in the belligerent countries has not been enhanced it has been substantially undermined the ability of the international legal and political system to operate as a means of resolving disputes has not been enhanced by this affair but has been fatally undermined by it this is a disaster this war on Iraq when the French statesman tell Iran was told by an aide of the mother of a political opponent the aide said it's a terrible crime sir and tell Iran answered it's worse than a crime it's a blunder this attack on Iraq and its subsequent occupation is a crime yes but it's worse than a crime it's a blunder it's a blunder that's made us all more insecure it's a blunder which is destabilized the world multiplied our enemies it has few friends left and you will regard yourselves as having been privileged in years to come that you were able to witness the ridiculous spectacle of this popinjay who continues to support [Applause] christopher hitchens the final five minutes well I do share mr. gomez feeling that the debate or exchange may have passed the point of being point 'full I can't object to being called a popinjay since the principle definition is that of a target for archery and shot it's not much I dare say have brought upon myself and certainly feel of weather and in mr. Galloway's case I'll just have to say since even from the chair there was a question as it were about my motive in this and I think I can describe it very simply and it was rather fairly put in fact by my great antagonists held myosin the editor of The American Prospect in a recent article said Mr Justice motivation for being involved in this appears to be his old friendship and solidarity with the secular Iraqi Kurdish left forces I thought well that's nice because just for once someone has got right how it was that I made some new friends didn't lose the old ones unless they wanted to desert me but I will tell you that some of the admirers on the moveon.org world that I may have lost are well worth it in exchange for the comrades I obey and once I mr. Galloway may have enough in his memory as a socialists the the name that he's begun to disgrace so gravely so horribly to remember that if you take a position of solidarity with your comrades you take it win or lose up or down you don't say well I'm sorry comrades brothers and sisters I'm gonna have to desert you now because they might say well why is that and I might say have to tell them well because Michael Moore says so or because Cindy says so or because someone's offered me some oil-for-food money to do so and I'm not going to do it [Applause] you would be you would have more to be proud of ladies and gentlemen if you could after tonight point to something that you had done to help build up the new Iraq point to something that you were doing to help the Iraqi women's organizations who indeed do have to combat fundamentalism point to something you had done to help unearth the mass graves and console the relatives of those who are found in them point is something to you could you had yourselves contributed to the to the emancipation of Kurdistan you could saw something perhaps to help the new Iraqi press and media acquires some more modern equipment on which to conduct this to be why don't you think of the possible nobility of that alternative because to offer your solidarity instead to the 154 operations that are sabotaging for this process is to be is to be I think hopelessly covered in shame and something that you'll look back on with with real regret so I it's not too late there are many many many outlets for your feel for your compassion your energy your internationalism many Iraqis are crying out for your help don't appear do not do not appear do not appear to be deaf on a point as important as this and with that that's the end of my pro bono a bit from now and if you want to talk to me you need a receipt and I'll be sitting selling books because this is after all America thank you so much for coming [Applause] thank you very much for coming out tonight George Galloway will be signing copies of mr. Galloway goes to Washington Christopher Hitchens will be signing love poverty and war and blood class and Empire I'll also be signing the exception to the rulers you can form three lines here you can get your books at the back at the Haymarket book table in the lobby or right here thanks very much for being with us [Music] did we I think we did exactly George Galloway is the author of mr. Galloway goes to Washington it's published by the new press Christopher Hitchens is the author of love poverty and war published by nation books history biography and public affairs you're watching book TV on c-span 2 coming up at 11:00 p.m. Eastern former National Guardsman John Crawford recounts the 2003 US invasion of Baghdad and then breaking rank former Seattle police chief norm Stamper on policing in America tomorrow on book TV former senator Jesse Helms talks about his

Channel: PostNothingness

Views: 8,646

Rating: 4.8581562 out of 5

Keywords: Rhetoric, Galloway, Hitchens, Iraq War, Debate, Persuasion

Id: bd_k8Ud7n9c

Length: 112min 40sec (6760 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 19 2018