Twit's Twaddle?

Christopher Hitchens, well known war propagandist and right wing hack, slimes his way on to the pages of Slate with this eccentrically titled attack: Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle. Three things seem to be bothering him, starting with Maureen Dowd's:
The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.
No doubt that Mo was exaggerating slightly, but if interpreted as "moral authority to ask for a justification of the war." it seems pretty clear cut to me. Especially since neither GW nor any of his minions has ever come up with one that wasn't subsequently proven false.

Hitchens is perhaps being artfully obtuse when he finds this hard to reconcile with Sheehan's (perhaps overwrought) statement:
Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation and this world were betrayed by George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agendas after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy … not for the real reason, because the Arab Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy.
Sheehan later apologized for the Israel remarks, and I think she made a mistake by guessing at Bush's motives and connections to PNAC and NeoCons - she should have just concentrated on the known facts: Bush's explanations for the war: nuclear threats, terrorist connections, building democracy were either willfully false (one and two) or hopelessly ineptly pursued (three). But whatever - Dowd clearly wasn't implying that "moral authority" turned Sheehan into an infallible oracle or even an astute critic of the war, but Sheehan does have the moral authority to demand why - and expect something better than lies and nonsense.

Hitchens is (or pretends to be) too dumb to make this distinction, but then proclaims that he has a
"moral" right to say that she is spouting sinister piffle
Well, it is a free country, so I suppose he's technically correct. He doesn't have any "moral authority" though, because partisan hacks and other slime merchants are utterly lacking in the requisite of moral authority - a just cause.

And what kind of phrase is "sinister piffle" anyway - some new way of proclaiming "I have no penis" or what?

The rest of the article is tediously forgettable but, like Drudge, O'Reilly and other bottom feeders he is perplexed at Sheehan's change of attitude from the time of her interview with the President. Some kinds of stupidity are best ignored.

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