What connects Obama's pronouncements on head scarves and the argument over released Guantanamo detainees? - By Christopher Hitchens. There is a fascinating connection between what President Barack Obama said about head scarves for women in his June 4 speech in Cairo and the argument over the released Guantanamo detainees who have since been found, or found again, in the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Don't try to guess, but do please read on. Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of Arguably, a collection of essays. Ever since former Vice President Dick Cheney made the most of the New York Times headline of May 21, using Defense Department statistics to suggest that one in seven Guantanamo graduates had "returned to terrorism or militant activity," there has been a huge row about whether this is true and, if it is, why it is. Might it not be the case, for example, that an innocent person put through the Guantanamo experience might become "radicalized" and decide to join the ranks of jihad for the first time? Magazine - Christopher Hitchens. Farewell to Jesse Helms, a provincial redneck. - By Christopher Hitchens. It seemed somehow profane that Sen.
Jesse Helms should have managed to depart this life on the 232nd anniversary of the declaration of American independence. To die on the Fourth of July, one can perhaps be forgiven for feeling, is or ought to be a privilege reserved for men of the stamp of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom expired on that day in 1826, 50 years after the promulgation of the declaration. One doesn't want the occasion sullied by the obsequies for a senile racist buffoon. Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of Arguably, a collection of essays. Or, as the obituary in the New York Times so gently phrased it, for a man for whom "the orderliness of the small town even encompassed racial segregation; as a child, he saw it not as a great evil but as an accepted part of his world.
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