The latest issue of Vanity Fair continues plenty that’s well worth reading, including an interesting piece on the Bushes and the Bin Laden family. There’s a touch of conspiracy mongering about it, to be sure, but the administration needs to understand that, so long as the US relationship with the Kingdom remains shrouded in so much secrecy (how about those 28 pages?), it is opening itself up to the worst of speculation.

The highlight of the issue, however, is a piece by Christopher Hitchens on his recent visit to Iraq. There’s plenty of scope for controversy about on how matters are progressing over there, but few, one would hope, should disagree with this:

Hitchens is discussing the US forces, and then takes a look at their opposition:

“Against this [the US presence] are ranged the absolute scum of the earth. First one finds the remnant of the so-called Fedayeen Saddam: a cruel militia which used to be employed filling in those mass graves and performing other lowly tasks and which has never lost a battle against civilians. Before the war its ranks had already been augmented by imported “jihad” fighters from other countries, who have assisted the Baath Party in its mutation from pseudo-secularist Fascism into full-fledged Islamic dogmatism. The fanatics of the sole party meet the fanatics of the sole deity: a recent Saddamist “resistance” leaflet in Baghdad spoke of “One Leader/One Nation/One God,” and the rhetoric generally is the drone of “martyrdom” and “the infidels…”

That is the way to talk about the enemy.