Pro-Iraq War Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011, dies as US withdraws

Christopher Hitchens must be remembered in particular for the "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" that attributed 8 million Laotian, Cambodian , Vietnamese and Bengali deaths to this vile warmonger but likewise cannot be forgiven for his support for the Iraq War that has been associated since 2003 with 2.7 million war-related deaths, 1.5 million violent deaths (see Just Foreign Policy": http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq ), 1.2 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 5-6 million refugees, and 0.8 million under-5 infant deaths (90% avoidable and due to gross US Alliance violation of the Geneva Convention). Indeed Iraqi war-related dead since 1990 total 4.6 million, including 1.7 million violent deaths, 2.9 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation and 2.0 million under-5 infants deaths - 2.0 million children each robbed of the circa 60 years of life enjoyed by war-advocate Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens was not the only person who was, to quote George Eaton, "too casual in dismissing the civilian casualties (estimated at anything between 100,000 and a million)". Thus the taxpayer-funded Australian ABC (the Australian equivalent of the UK BBC) in reporting the American withdrawal stated "The withdrawal ends a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead". The Iraqi Genocide-complicit, Iraqi Genocide ignoring, Iraqi Genocide denying, Iraqi Holocaust-complicit, Iraqi Holocaust ignoring and Iraqi Holocaust denying ABC under-reported Iraq war dead by a factor of several hundred.

By way of comparison, David Irving has variously estimated that 3 million Jews died from deprivation and disease in concentration camps (see: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/australia/2gb-transcript-0795.html" href="http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/australia/2gb-transcript-0795.html">http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/australia/2gb-transcript-0795.html )

and that over 2.5 million were violently killed in Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/sep/29/secondworldwar.highereducation" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/sep/29/secondworldwar.highereducation">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/sep/29/secondworldwar.highereducation ) , as compared to Professor Sir Martin Gilbert's estimates of 5-6 million deaths with 1 in 6 dying from deprivation.

Sir Martin Gilbert has been an apologist for the British in the WW2 Bengal Famine, asserting that 1.5 million died whereas an expert medical historian estimate is that 6-7 million Indians were deliberately starved to death by the British in the WW2 Bengali Holocaust, the first WW2 atrocity to have been described in a book as a "holocaust" (by N.G. Jog in 1944). Gilbert, like Hitchens, supported the Iraq War and one wonders what estimate of Iraqi war deaths will be made by the Chilcot Inquiry of which Gilbert is a member.

Gandhi was imprisoned by the British during WW2; the Japanese imperialists and the INA offered 100,000 tonnes of rice to starving Bengal and the Canadians offered 10,000 tonnes - both offers were rejected by Churchill. The racist Australians sat on a mountain of grain under instructions from Churchill while Bengal and the adjoining provinces of Assam, Bihar and Orissa starved (indeed the Australians had so much grain in WW2 they had to build huge improvised emergency grain stores across the country.

Back in 2006 Christopher Hitchens BA attacked The Lancet (one of the top medical journals) and top US medical epidemiologists from 36 Nobel Laureate Johns Hopkins University and 96 Nobel Laureate Columbia University who had published in The Lancet expertly obtained evidence that about 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion, 90% violently. This is part of what non-medico, non-scientist, non-PhD, non-researcher Hitchens had to say in an article entitled "The Lancet's slant. Epidemiology meets moral idiocy" : "If the cause of all this death is "the war," does that mean that the coalition has killed nearly 700,000 Iraqis? Of course it means nothing of the sort" (see: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2006/10/the_lancets_slant.html ).

Writer Hitchens was not merely complicit in the Iraq War, the Iraqi Holocaust and the Iraqi Genocide (4.6 million war-related deaths, 1990-2011, 1.7 million violent; 2.7 million war-related deaths, 2003-2011, 1.5 million violent; Google "Iraqi Holocaust" and "Iraqi Genocide") he was also, as revealed by the above quote, a morally deficient, anti-science holocaust denier.

From his no doubt well-padded armchair Hitchens BA also savaged both Gandhi and Mother Theresa for their approaches to grinding Indian poverty. However Hitchens was NOT - unlike most British writers, politicians and academics - a holocaust denier in relation to the WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by the British, 1942-1945; see the 2008 BBC broadcast involving Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and other scholars: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). Thus Hitchens on the 1942-1945 Bengal Famine: "The Bengal famine of 1943 was not the result of too many people or too little food. The granaries were full; there was rice enough for everybody. But bureaucratic maladministration, and an artificial rise in food prices, meant that many, many people starved to death within reach of plentiful nourishment. (Winston Churchill, then prime minister, snorted that the starvation in his favorite colony was the outcome of Indians breeding “like rabbits”: a harsh judgment on herbivores—even if Bengalis were eating grass at the time—which matched his view that Indians were “the beastliest people in the world, next to the Germans.”)" (see: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2000/07/hitchens-china-200007 ).