Hitchens vs. Heston - Gulf War (02/05/1991) 

'With all due modesty...' hahaha

@@samsavojbolagi5513 The nine hundred thousand Iraqi lives lost in the invasion does not get mentioned.

​@@chhuntley5616They deserved it. Bunch of violent jihdist scum. The only problem was there wasn't a higher death count.

'you think I don't know the difference ?' heston 'i know you don't know the difference!' hitch brilliant stuff - haven't had a good laugh in days

Brilliant. What's brilliant is how he backtracked and apologized for all of this, morphed into a full-blown Iraq Invasion cheerleader and all around neocon twat, and is still lionized on RU-vid. Never mind his celebration of NA genocide. You people are hopeless.

+Mohamed Il-Nasrani I really laugh at this one! :))) :D

+Mohamed Il-Nasrani hahahaha..like it

Well funny

I remember watching this interview in '91 while it was happening. The part I remembered most was the Moses comment and how brazenly impudent it was. In retrospect Hitchens was right about that war. It was the first blow at destabilizing the Middle-East which has given rise to the extremism and refugee problems we are suffering today. Since then we have also come to learn that before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Sadam called a meeting with the American Ambassador April Glaspie to ask what the U.S. opinion was regarding an invasion. He was told, "the U.S. has no opinion", pretty much giving him the go-ahead. It would seem Iraq was goaded into invading Kuwait.

@Paul Catania The so-called ”refugee problems” are nothing else than a plan developed and implemented by Western elite to get workforce at low costs.

agreed

Yep Mr sir did great

I certainly agree with this. The lack of civility and integrity from the media currently is humiliating although I find it interesting that hitch offers a similar critique of the media in this interview. I suppose it is a matter of degree. I don’t remember feeling very strongly about the failing of the media in the 90’s.

Yeah. Miss that type of journalism. That guy impressed me thr most. He let them debate without butting in.

Agree

Great Simpsons reference!

Lovely work.

"You truly are the king of kings."

The war? Which one? He never changed his mind on either war.

​@@PresidentialWinnerYes he did, and said as much.

heston, the white supremacist & former president of the nra, supporters of gun control when the black panthers armed themselves, now of course, opposers of gun control. the third most influential lobbying organisation in the u.s & supporter of the fascist sociopath trump, to the tune of 30m

Jazzkeyboardist1 you’re absolutely obsessed with his bisexuality, aren’t you? I’ve read so many of your comments and they all mentioned this. Who cares? Who cares if he’s bisexual? Apart from you? It’s a non issue. Are you bisexual? Why are you so angry about this? Do you think you’re going to change minds? If not....why are you bothering? Seems like a redundant activity really. I’m not being rude, I’m just stumped as to why you detest him so much. I’ve seen other comments that are hateful that you’ve written. He’s dead.....you can let it go now, whatever it is you’re angry about.

Jazzkeyboardist1 and, you said on a previous comment I read that you don’t call people names first. Calling people mental midgets proves this is untrue. Can you converse without being rude? Or not?

Jazzkeyboardist1 I didn’t say I loved Hitchens. I just have noticed how angry and spiteful you are. You speak like you’re perfect. Are you perfect? What secret do you have hidden in your closet, and would you like me to hold it against you after death? Princess Diana had many affairs. She was human and whilst I don’t judge her, I don’t push facts aside. Bill Clinton admits to having an affair. You’re writing, mocking Hitchens...no? So, you’re a hypocrite, right? You say you don’t like him for speaking about others affairs.....yet, you speak about his affairs. That to me is a hypocrite. The wars? I didn’t support either. The fallout of it has taken so many lives. It was all about oil and the lie of weapons of mass destruction was a lie. None were ever found. You’re not “owning” him at all. HE IS DEAD. who are you owning? Really? He doesn’t exist anymore. It’s not who you’re ranting about, I don’t really care, it’s the way you do it. You did write that you don’t call people names first....yet, you did just that. You are angry. It’s obvious. And, what does it do to you that you feel the need to be so hung up on a dead man? Counterproductive isn’t it? Did you know him personally? If you didn’t.....let it go. You do come across as slightly unhinged. And it’s fascinating but a head scratcher at the same time. It’s a fruitless effort you’re making. Intriguing!

@Jazzkeyboardist1 you are away with the fairies.

MexxPowers Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, Russia, Iran, DUH

nopotential Listen Moses; your knowledge is lacking, and you want to bomb Iraq to the stone age therefore you probably should rethink your your views on Operation Desert Storm.

America, capital of the world.

+MexxPowers although ironically in more recent/later years he would've shunned that kind of "glib" liberal critique of the war.

redryan20000 He still called G.W. Bush a low I.Q, unlettered man, with eyes standing close to each other. But he did change his mind on the first Iraq war.

Volound The internet is a weird and wonderful thing.

+Volound even a moment of feeling like I've seen something new of Christopher, no matter how old, is worth more to me than hours of talking heads on both sides of an issue.

+Volound "this happened before i was even born" Damn. I'm getting old.

@@purplegorilla9592 I was 36 at the time and am 63 now - am my opinion the Iraqi War was wrong and waste of American Lives (All wars are a waste of lives really, the only ones that are wasted are those who vote for it since they are safe at home, Read War is a Racket by Lt. Gen. Smedley Butler twice decorated with Medal of Honor Here is a link to down the book, short and easy to read, Since reading it I have found none of the wars fought to be of any good, starting with WWl, the winners are the munitions manufacturers, the loosers are the wives, daughters, sons and other family members of the solders, chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf

@@55Quirll damn right, but keep on voting, i'm told it matters.

But he then supported the war in Iraq during Dubya’s term.

And then Hitchens became a naive war monger.

Travis Harkins ohhh triggered much ??

Jazzkeyboardist1 I didn’t realize all the members of Congress and the president are atheists. Someone should inform George Bush he’s an atheist according to some RU-vid commenters.

@@TheIncognitusMe and where is Iraq nuclear weapons? lie from 1991 till 2003...

Hitch vpublicly changed his mind& argued against himself here & vs all Islamic fundamentalism soon after this proving Hestons premise was very sound!. Heston maybe didn't know his geography of Arabis Vwell, but he sure as hell knew more than Hitch about weapons& the threat Iraq posed to🇺🇸 etc supporting Al queda+ at that point regularly firing scud missiles@🇮🇱. Heston was actually a progressive& a champion of freedom,democracy+ equality, he only became portrayed latterly as Conservative due to close association with the NRA. If you consider yourself a progressive of any shade you should be glad nobody managed to prise anything from his cold dead hands.

Not odd given an actor and a gameshow host have been President.

@@Cleisthenes607 it is odd...how is heston an expert on the gulf war and as christopher clearly shows he had no idea of the geography of the persian gulf area...hitchens as usual was absolutely spot on with his observations .

@doctorsocrates4413 Hitch vpublicly changed his mind& argued against himself here & vs all Islamic fundamentalism soon after this proving Hestons premise was very sound!. Heston maybe didn't know his geography of Arabis Vwell, but he sure as hell knew more than Hitch about weapons& the threat Iraq posed to🇺🇸 etc supporting Al queda+ at that point regularly firing scud missiles@🇮🇱. Heston was actually a progressive& a champion of freedom,democracy+ equality, he only became portrayed latterly as Conservative due to close association with the NRA. If you consider yourself a progressive of any shade you should be glad nobody managed to prise anything from his cold dead hands.

Proof and link's please sir.

@@TheMoon-mc9nk ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AjNJUilKhpc.html

@@theolima8929 Thanks for taking the time.

But he did warn at about 15:10, that a return "having switched sides" would be needed. He understood this shit better than most.

He changed his opinion when he perceived Muslim threat, plus learned he was Jewish, which he write about in Vanity Fair

+River Morrison Brave... but pathetic

+River Morrison Brave... but pathetic

+River Morrison Hardly. Don't confuse arrogance with bravery.

worser than Bahrain...he thought Russia bordered Iraq lol

@Jesse Brennan Do you mean the Americans who do not possess a Passport? Or, those Americans who do own and use a Passport.

Yeah & perhaps his latter views hold more credibility, given his earlier position...eh?!

*were

This was pretty ridiculous as well though to be fair. Heston had no business being anywhere neat a television studio debating a topic he clearly had no idea about

And farage

They don’t view them as human.

Heston is a mental patient

I agree that if you don't know much about the subject and you come to this as a complete neutral with no background information, and if you judge it purely on rhetoric and style...then Heston comes across as calm and patient in the face of provocation. But if you actually listen to the arguments he puts forward, and if you take in just how condescending, hypocritical, callous and lazy(never mind geographically illiterate) some of the things he says actually are, then it all falls apart.

You’re right. Hitchens would have still defended his position on protecting civilians though. But he’s right - the whole western world owned the media coverage and rarely was the war questioned at that time. And why put an ignorant actor on tv to debate an informed and sharp journalist?

Heston won that debate ultimately though, and very decisively - I think Hitchens later wrote a book about the gas attacks he referred to. Also Hitchens was obnoxious and uncouth here, lacking the dignity shown by Heston.

What does playing make-believe and dress-up have to do with political opinions? I will never understand why we give entertainers so much clout.

shame a little more than a decade ahead, hitchens would be vomiting the same bromides FOR war

But but but muh ad hominem .....

"You educated maniac...you blew me up with informed eloquence. Damn you! *_God.damn.Hitch.to.Hell"_*

Outstanding

I like Hitch but that was pretty pathetic .... responding to Heston's claim that he was resorting to ad hominem attacks with an ad hominem attack. Should have just said that Heston failed the geography lesson.

Bitchier as he got older.

@@jeffcahill5722 If you didn't know this yet, let me tell you a secret; Hitch didn't care about civility. He said it was overrated.

@@jeffcahill5722 i think the point was to show heston what a real ad hominem attack is. Before that he never attacked him ad hominem.

@@PresidentialWinner As was he.

Brilliantly quick mind - still laughing hair piece omg !

Moses, if such a person ever existed, was a bronze age lunatic who thought he was hearing voices.... to Heston as Moses is ... apt.

I don't get it can someone explain it please?

@@mmd_ra Heston played Moses in the Ten Commandments, an American film. It's a play on the religiosity of conservatives and the fact that some people likely view his playing Moses as some kind of authority lmao. I like the guys movies but he's a actor and a human at the end of the day.

But you didn´t comment on the fact that a few years later he was suddenly in favour of a war against Iraq and America deciding what they could develop!

@@burtingtuneUnfortunately Christopher Hitchens was a hypocrite plainly. Something that all his fanboys could never truly see

​@@burtingtuneI mean, a, there's a little event called SEPTEMBER 11TH that changed a lot for a lot of people, and b, one doesn't have to agree with someone one hundred percent of the time to appreciate and miss them.

You could tell he was reading from notes. Just in his voice alone. I don't know why they had him on as a guest, to debate Hitchens? It was such an unusual pairing.

+Clifton100 me too!

Hitchins won this one but got smashed by Galloway by a total knockout.

I did. LOL. And that was after Chomsky on Hitchens morphed into Galloway...Guess if Christopher couldn't beat 'em he joined them. After all, as he noted, what chance did he have against a media that gave equal time to batshit crazy tactics like Heston? But yeah, came to see Christopher in his prime doing good work.

asdwaetd oh man i have just seen the galloway hitchens debate

@@dougchapman9138 to change one's opinion is a response to reason & Hitch supported intervention in iraq, not a war & certainly not for the same reasons of the administration, nor their tactics. Galloway is somewhat more predictable in his bias, & never once outwitted Hitch.

Me too3😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

@@dyschromotopia He did, in fact, support the Iraq War and was parroting the same arguments as Bush and Blair were making. In fact, even after the invasion took place and no WMDs were found, he claimed that maybe Saddam sent them to another country.

I’m afraid that comment was an example of Hitchens losing his cool. I’m sure he regretted it soon after.

Jazzkeyboardist1 no

When a headshot is a low blow. Unnecessary.

Such a clever retort, Heston accused him of ad hominem, about which he was incorrect because his demonstrable lack of knowledge of the region was NOT an ad hominem,, so then Hitch then make an actual ad hominem as a joke, was so Hitch slap in the face to the moronic war hawk Heston.

@@fuckfannyfiddlefart nothing clever about that. Hitch is clever enough not to have to resort that sort of childish insult

Hitch looks like an idiot and a mindless contrarian. He opposed removing Saddam from an illegal invasion of Kuwait, but then a decade later supported the invasion and removal of Saddam over WMDs we never found. Makes zero sense, and Hitch looks foolish over it. His whole act here is pretty lame far left propaganda, and his complaint about Heston only naming 3 bordering nations correctly is as weak as you can get. Heston names nations bordering Iraq to the north, east and south correctly, and Hitch acts like that disqualifies him from having an opinion. Weak, like everyone on the far left. And he complains about the violence of the war, when Saddam instigated it with an invasion of a neighbor.

@@JK-br1mu yes he drifted hypocritically astray yet his appearance here, if you’re defending the know-nothing wingnut Heston you look as foolish as he did, or as you thought Hitchens did. We’re all hypocrites but some of us are a hell of a lot worse than others

@@thebeatcreeperhe was indeed, and people like forgetting that.

Actually- he admitted years later that he was wrong about the w😮ar and stopping Sadam was necessary

@@mikefitzgerald41 And he was wrong about that. He got it right the first time.

Heston embarrassed himself

Not really. Hitchens was playing Ad Hominem.

​@@jamesrobertson432You're ignorance is showing.

Hitchens was a very clever man however he was very dismissive of people who had legitimate and valid opinions that were different to his own , he often made very valid points but he was also rude and childlike, personally I think Heston comes out of this exchange in a far better light regardless of whether you agree with him or not.

​@@neilcarpenter2669honestly, Heston came off as a smug warmonger who considered pushback personal attacks If you've ever sene Hitchens before i debate, you'd know the hairpiece comment was a warning shot

Fortunately, thats not required.

Witty, very witty

👏👏

Hitchens exudes pomposity, not Heston, imo.

Heston, like Reagan, frequently forgot the line between himself and the character he was playing.

Mark Yates-White Get a hold of this nigga so I can make sense of all this!!!!!

My favourite comment 😂😂😂😂 I don't wanna dance I'm scared to death

Where is jahh!?

😂

Yes he went astray for a few years there, but seemed to be coming back around by ‘08-‘09

Yes. He was suitably demolished for that in a debate with the now rabid George Galloway.

He deeply apologized for that mistake. This is what I loved about him. He had intergrity and he always apologized when he was in the wrong. People like Moses here never apologized for anything in their lives. That is the difference between Hitchens and other hypocrites. He believed in truth and justice and not being right or wrong.

These are two very different wars. You can accept one and not the other or vice versa.

"So, you seriously mean to say that we would not be living in a better or safer world if the coalition forces had turned around and sailed or flown home in the spring of 2003?" " That’s exactly what I mean to say."

I think it would be more accurate to say he showed no offense. He kept his composure. You never know how an actor truly feels. Heston was one of the greatest.

League of his own hypocrite: against the minor war against Iraq but in favour of the one that virtually destroyed it. Or did you conveniently forget that?

Hitchens was FOR the 2003 Iraq invasion. Go figure.

Seems he considered Iran the larger menace at this time given Saddam was considered a secularist at this point. He extrapolated his love of fellow travelers Jurds to the Shi'ite majority in the second invasion.

He did mop the floor with Heston and his hairpiece 😂🤣

@Jazzkeyboardist1 you sound unhinged

@Jazzkeyboardist1 why do you pulled unfortunate suicide of his mother... wtf do you know about her reasons - and you point as chris... you are pathetic prick

No he didn't. This Moses Mk II thinks he knows everything. If only he had stuck to acting in movies...

Bucketheadhead he literally copy and pastes that comment on probably every video with Hitchens in it.

@@Zachd500 I saw him on another video too. He called Christopher, Chrissy there too. 🤣 He is really mad.

I think it was more about helping our Saudi buddies more than anything, and they benefitted.

Even though he is not mentioned here by name I have seen enough of his comments to know who you were referring to when you said "He called Christopher, Chrissy".😄@@Amor_fati.Memento_Mori

It would probably only be interesting as a study of polemics, since Hitchens had shown himself in later years to be a master of duplicity, in the archaic sense.

He also, famously, administered waterboarding on himself around the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal, declaring it to be absolute torture. With all due respect, Hitchens's flaws are athletically swept under the table because we love to beat up on the likes of Heston.

@@Sibyl3n3 "He also, famously, administered waterboarding on himself around the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal, declaring it to be absolute torture." What's the issue here? Waterboarding IS torture.

@@Sibyl3n3 You can support getting rid of fascist genocidal crime families that own whole countries and agree that waterboarding is torture. They’re not binary.

@@RikerLovesWorf It's not a philosophical or logical qualm. It's the deft manipulation of Hitchen's language and the implications of his later actions. Listen again to the barbs and epithets used. ("Reaganite hacks," etc.) By framing opposing voices this way, you are resorting to a zero-sum conclusion. Not much nuance there, is there?. Further, that Hitchens would volubly skewer someone in support of a war that he would eventually find merit in much later, using these kinds of barbs, is worth serious question. This is to say nothing of the exhibitionism and absurdity of filming yourself being momentarily "waterboarded," which vastly trivializes the suffering of ACTUAL victims of that procedure. Once again: Hitchen has his flaws, and (as usual) no one is listening to them.

Not as bad as Michael Moore destroyed him in Bowling for Columbine

@@Kaspen82 🤣

Actually Heston stayed cool and collected and made hitch look like a whiny emotional bitxh

They still do ffs!

I thought the same thing. I love Hitch, but I think he was ineffective here with Heston. Interesting to see an earlier Hitchens. Definitely still honing his oratory powers.

Bullshit.

If you read his collection of Essays, 'Love Poverty & War' There are about a dozen or so on War, listed before & after September (9/11) this polar opposite Hitch would make a bit more sense

***** Hitchens mopped the floor with Heston.

***** Except that Hitchens years later swapped to being in favour of Heston's position

Gee, you’re so much smarter than us dumb Americans…you overestimate your brain power…

@Kevin-gr5mp you’re equally ignorant gauging the intellect of an entire country’s population…only 340,653,220 people as of right now…

Fair Point If you give a man a gun , he can rob a bank , if you give a man a bank , he can rob the world

Yeah, totally! Star Fox, N64... hadn't thought about that game in ages! I use to spend hours on it! Ah, nostalgia... 😊

Ah, great game..

@Jazzkeyboardist1 Which secret sex services do you refer to?

*upon ;-)

@@sidDkid87 thanks. I fixed it.

@@stevenyourke7901 it really is sad / frightening how the media is this country has been bought and sold to the MIC / corporate America

You call bringing in a washed up actor for commentary serious news analysis?

@@smullaney84 Hitchens opposes the war that actually makes sense: the one where Iraq invades another country and occupies, and then supports the one that doesn't make any sense: invading and occupying Iraq when it was just sitting there doing absolutely doing nothing. Explain that to me.

No, you have it wrong. The second war came about after 911.

Hitch Christians meets Christopher Hitchens

I recommend his c-span discussion with Morton Kondracke

+Kasper999 bin laden cited the stationing of US troops on the arabian peninsula in 1990/91 as one of the key reasons he wanted to wage a war on America, so Hitchens was right about the consequences of the first gulf war.