Christopher Hitchens vs Scott Ritter Debate 12/20/2006

Christopher Hitchens debates Scott Ritter in Tarrytown, NY December 20, 2005.

World traveler, literary critic, feared iconoclast, and journalist extraordinaire Christopher Hitchens debates former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN Weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
Moderated by Jay Diamond

This is one of the more interesting of Hitchens' debates in my opinion. Here his opponent, Scott Ritter, is certainly far more informed than previous opponents of Hitchens. And Ritter, unlike fools like George Galloway, doesn't seem to have any secret sympathies for Saddam Hussein.

This is just the audio, amateurishly set to vaguely relevant images by myself.

Iraq, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, George W. Bush, Hans Blix, Kanan Makiya, US Military, UN.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Christopher Hitchens
• Scott Ritter
• Iraq
• debate
• WMD
• George Bush
• Donald Rumsfeld
• Dick Cheney
• Inspections
• UN
• Terrorism
• middle east
• weapons
• Rolf Ekeus
• Hans Blix
• Tony Blair
• George Galloway

[Mrsiepel]

Didnt this Ritter guy get busted for jerking off to little girls?

[MattSingh1]

@LueTm (cont)...and supporting the struggle of people to have a secular, pluralist democracy. I have to say, I find it hard to muster any sympathy for an enemy that would kill us in a heartbeat just because we don’t think like they do, or want to live like they do. If you’re willing to second-guess fighting theocratic Fascism, you’re carrying their water for them. In regard to ‘deformed bodies’, that’s emotional piffle on the grandest scale.

[LueTm]

@MattSingh1 I don't debate they didn't. I debate that that make's them fair game for nukes. I'm not a left-winger, I'm a middle-right & I'm a humanist & I was in favour of regime-change in Iraq.

All that doesn't change that nuking civilians is mass-slaughtering and wrong. Because:

a) You slaughter innocent children

b) You cripple the next generations & causae miscarriages for years to come.

c) You contaminate the region for years.

Now stop ad hominem & empty assuptions about me.

[MattSingh1]

@LueTm "You clearly do not understand Japanese culture during that time." (1) I appear to have a far superior understanding of it than you sir, as you are actually debating whether or not most, if not all, Japanese pledged their lives to Hirohito. (2) From your 'mass-slaughter' notion, I see you're yet another body-bag peace-movement extreme leftist, who doesn't know an enemy when they see one. I indeed support the intervention in Iraq, because I believe in human solidarity... (cont)

[LueTm]

@MattSingh1 You clearly do not understand Japanese culture during that time. Read the Wikipedia article about "Kamikaze" or/and "Shinto". But lets pretend it wasn't like that: Even if they supported their emperor doesn't mean that you can just mass-slaughter them, contaminate their land so that generations after children with deformed bodies and illnesses are born. In your world: US attacked Irak because you didn't agree with them, lots of americans supported that: nuke Detroit &NY!

[MattSingh1]

@LueTm But sir, did I not explain that the vast majority, if not all, of Japanese civilians not only backed their Emperor, but actually pledged their lives to him via suicide if necessary. To compare and conflate Imperialist Japan and modern-day North Korea is considerably off-target; the people of North Korea are clearly slaves in their own land, whereas Japanese people during the rule of Hirohito were willing to give their lives for the bloated despot. The people of North Korea have no choice.

[LueTm]

@MattSingh1 This is wrong on so many levels.I agree about RP, but nukeing innocent civilians is just wrong. Would it be OK to nuke North Korea too? Because lots of people supported Kim Jon Il. Maybe they do, but because they either can't speak out without being arrested or just don't know of anything else.

[MattSingh1]

@LueTm On

On Ron Paul, I honestly cannot stand his policies, and his supporters seem to be nothing but sycophants. On your last point, I disagree with you notion that those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were innocent civilians; the vast, vast majority of Japanese during the Second World War believed Emperor Hirohito to be semi-divine, at least, with the vast majority of the population pledging their life to him. I have no qualms about dropping any sort of bomb on that strain of totalitarianism.

[LueTm]

@MattSingh1 That's not what I mean. He could be a total hypocrit, but he could still be right (for different reasons). When it comes to that topic, I am very torn between the Ron Paul view and the Hitchens view (too bad we'll never see that debate). It is especially problematic when the nation that wants to control nuclear weapons technology is the only one that has used in a war against the civil population of it's enemy.

[JoeJones3001]

@ifemunited Well no he does address this. Ritter says that the president should've have said liberation if it was about liberation but he only claimed WMDs. Hitchens says is not bound by the president, Htchens' argument centres around the need for removal of a theocrat. He doesn't care why they said they were going in, he understands that having any theocrat is, loosely put, bad. He doesn't need to answer it as his case is independent of Bush's

[pcdonahue]

When the Invasion of Iraq went down I was definitely thinking along the lines of Ritter but becoming a Hitchens fan in the past couple of years, he's argument is just too convincing and one you that's awfully hard to refute in any moral sense.