Danner's first move was to invoke the question under discussion: "'Has Bush made us safer?' I ask all of you to think of it in personal terms. My answer in personal terms is no." He then recited a litany of ways that Bush had made America less safe. Bush had ignored Clinton's warnings about terrorism, preferring to work on missile defense. He invaded Afghanistan, but then left it "as insecure as he found it, letting al-Qaida and the Taliban flow back into a vacuum that U.S. forces left." He "debilitated the main arm of defense against terrorism, the U.S. intelligence agencies, which are now fighting in full-throated anger against the administration." And, of course, "He started a preemptive war with Iraq that did not have to be fought, that in spite of everything Christopher just said was not necessary, was not forced upon the United States."

Danner, who had just returned from a harrowing trip to Iraq -- he said he was the first journalist on the scene after the Red Cross headquarters was bombed -- then turned to the facts on the ground. "The war, as I can testify from personal experience over the past couple of weeks, is getting worse. When I arrived in Baghdad about three weeks ago there were an average of 15 attacks every day on American forces. When I left, the average had gone up to nearly 35. For all the talk about the fact that 89, 60, 95 percent of the country is perfectly fine and pacified, in fact the area in which fighting is going on, in which Americans and Iraqis are being killed, is steadily broadening."

Danner went on to say that after extensive reporting, including lengthy on- and off-the-record interviews with top U.S. brass, it was clear to him that the military was "completely at sea. They don't know how to fight what is a growing insurgency."

Citing the missing WMD and the cooked intelligence used to claim that Saddam was an imminent threat, Danner said, "The citizens of the United States were essentially swindled into supporting a war that was not necessary. They were swindled into supporting a war that is getting more serious, more difficult by the day ... In fact, I would argue that the country has become involved in a war that will end up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was a war against terror? Well, you have a situation on the ground where more and more jihadists are coming over what are now more and more open borders into Iraq. Were we worried at the time that Iraqis were going to be killing Americans? Well, they are doing so, right now. Were we worried that there would be more suicide bombing? Well, we see it on our television screens every day."

Danner closed by saying that Bush's "foolish" war should not have been fought -- because there was no proof that Saddam had threatened the United States, because young Americans are now dying every day ("and they are increasingly bewildered why they are there dying every day") and because the invasion turned Iraq into an al-Qaida-friendly haven.

In his rebuttal, Hitchens scored a point out of the gate when he challenged Danner's claim that Afghanistan posed a greater threat now than it did under the Taliban. "To say that we are less safe there would be the equivalent of saying that we were safer from al-Qaida before Sept. 11, when unknown to us -- though apparently known to our vaunted intelligence services which have suffered so grievously under the Bush administration, though not passed on to one another or to the civilian leadership -- was the fact that a secret army was being formed inside our borders, with support from foreign regimes," Hitchens caustically observed. "That was known then. It just wasn't considered to be worthy of any serious action. The security we enjoyed when al-Qaida and the Taliban controlled Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, when it must be admitted fewer Americans were then being killed and there was less violence, was the security of a fool's paradise."

He whacked his bête noir, Bill Clinton, saying Clinton "didn't do much about Saddam, or al-Qaida either, except bombing the wrong target in Sudan, lying about it and letting Osama bin Laden get away while looking better by pursuing a Nobel peace prize for a futile Oslo process."

Then Hitchens returned again to the theme on which his entire justification for war is based (leaving aside the moral justification, which in response to a later question about North Korea he tacitly acknowledged was not absolute): the notion that Saddam and al-Qaida are two fingers of one Islamo-fascist hand.

"Is there anyone who thinks that we have not been for some time at war with the forces of jihad and the totalitarian states that underwrite them?" Hitchens rhetorically asked. "Is there anyone who really thinks that the arrangement between the Baath party and the Fedayeen Saddam and the jihadis who are now coming into Iraq began only when the United States intervened? Nobody who's studied the question could believe this for a second -- the Ansar al Islam group formed in Kurdistan under Saddam Hussein's protection, the subventions of money and propaganda support to jihad forces all around the world were an increasingly conspicuous feature of the Baathist regime."

After arguing that the invasion of Iraq was "a fairly useful pedagogic example" that forced Iran's mullahs to accept U.N. inspection of its nuclear program, Hitchens took up the theme of the debate (which he distanced himself from, calling it "the slightly fatuous rubric of our own self-regard and safety"), saying, "Yes, you are safer for the disarmament of Iraq. Yes, you are safer for the physical destruction of the Taliban-bin Laden regime."

As for the embarrassingly missing WMD, Hitchens refused to back down an inch. "The Kay report ... finds evidence of an enormous and consistent concealment program," Hitchens said. "Call me old-fashioned if you will, but by my logic of induction, a concealment program is evidence in itself. No one has a concealment program to conceal nothing. Scientists were threatened, two of them were shot, for even considering cooperation with the earlier inspectors, not that I think the Blix team was really looking ... Designs and plans for missiles were found by the Kay team -- who are only a quarter of the way into their work -- that far exceed, by thousands of miles, the limits that Saddam Hussein was allowed. Toxins have been found concealed in private homes. It's quite extraordinary how far the depravity of the Saddam regime has been exposed in this matter of weapons of mass destruction by the Kay report."

In his rebuttal, Danner moved to a higher conceptual plane, raising questions about what kind of government feels the need to lie to its people for their own good, and what kind of citizenry it is that is so readily convinced by those lies.

"I think we're all faced with a question here, which is, are we citizens or are we dupes?" Danner said. "Do we have the ability to make distinctions? Can we read a newspaper, listen to the news, listen to our leaders speak to us and make judgments on our own? The evidence of the last few months gives us some pause. Christopher Hitchens was clearly one of the 69 percent of Americans who the Washington Post claims believe that Saddam was behind 9/11."

Hitchens interjected, "If I had thought that I would have said it."

"I would have been grateful if you had said it explicitly," Danner replied. "You know, George Bush came out a few weeks ago after a particularly egregious performance by his vice president and said, 'No, we have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.' I found it fascinating that he felt obliged to say this. Because the administration, over months and months of very clever statements, very clever terminology, very cleverly dancing around the issue, was able to convince the greater majority of Americans that in fact these two threats were the same thing. These Americans who were shocked by 9/11, as everyone was, who saw their fellow citizens being killed while they were having their morning coffee, were perfectly willing to support a war against Iraq that they thought was replying to that immediate threat. Now this kind of clever obfuscation is still being employed, every day. We've seen a little of it on this stage."

Danner challenged Hitchens' repeated attempts to link Saddam and bin Laden, although disappointingly he did not offer any substantive arguments on this crucial point. "Christopher's imminent threat arguments rely on the perception that Saddam and al-Qaida are essentially the same. They're not. They're not. They weren't the same. And the arguments made for supporting the war were misleading, obfuscatory and relied on premises that have since been disproven."

He then reminded the audience of the uncomfortable fact that some of Saddam's most evil deeds were openly supported by the United States. "Saddam attacked his neighbors -- well, America supported him in his attack on Iran. The United States supported him while he was gassing his citizens. Does that mean he was not a threat? Not necessarily. But it does mean that when you hear people making these arguments, you should reach for your wallet and make sure it's still in your pocket.

"Our argument tonight only marginally has to do with national security. What it has to do with is national integrity. Whether we as a democracy can make decisions based on fact, based on how the world actually is ... without our leaders misleading us. It seems to me on this stage we're seeing another example of such misleading."

Hitchens responded to Danner's charge that the Bush administration used clever language and underhanded tricks to create the impression that Saddam Hussein was the same as al-Qaida by saying, "The Bush administration never in fact made that claim, and has never made it, and has repeatedly repudiated it." He did not acknowledge that Danner had argued that the claim was never made explicit.

Then he returned to his central theme that there was in fact a strong connection between them. "That there is a connection between Saddamism and jihadism I think need not be doubted, cannot be doubted. Ansar, support for the suicide murderers in Palestine, support for jihadis as a rhetoric and the consistent support by the Baath party ruling Iraq for Osama bin Laden as a front-line struggle against American imperialism."

Turning to the ugly military situation, Hitchens grew bellicose. "The United States has absolute military superiority there. To listen to Mark Danner you'd think we were on the verge of a military defeat in a war that quite simply cannot be lost. The war has barely begun. I'm not in favor of the raising of any white flag."

At this point, Hitchens' tone changed noticeably. He became more aggressive and personal, more didactic, more accusatory, more moralistic. This was no longer just a discussion -- it was something of a sermon, one that turned into a tongue-lashing of the liberals and intellectuals who had failed to grasp the threat of Islamo-fascism. "Let's be clear what we're talking about. Let's not be flippant about matters of national security. There was and there is a Hitler-Stalin pact between the forces of jihad and the forces of Baathist totalitarianism. It's an honor to be on the other side from it, it's an honor to have as many Iraqi and Kurdish friends as I can claim who have already decided to risk their lives fighting it, risking them for our sakes as well."

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