Rating: 
Summary: I am immigrants, and I supporting war
Review: I, like Hitchens, am living America as foreigner, and I likes it!! I think America invasion of Iraq is good. More American culture and values in mid-east is good things. I hoping America invading other country who don't know what is good - like Iran and Jordan and Pakistan and all poor country who practice violent religion and not knowing American cultures and fashions. I dream one day America invading all the countries and we having Burger King and KFC and big Wal-Marts parking lots for everyones to park they cars in with no parking problems any more. This is my dreams.
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Summary: Must read for anyone who attended the peace rally
Review: It is a short book with interesting take on the war, one that you will not hear in the popular media. As a centrist decmocrate I wanted to see how a left-wing thinks and he would justify this war and I was pleased to read the book.
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Summary: A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq
Review: Political commentator Hitchens continues his rightward lurch towards unquestioning support of American militarism in this series of dispatches partly written from Baghdad for the online magazine . Penning the essays between November 2002 and April 2003, Hitchens spends little time reporting, devoting most of his effort to demonizing Saddam Hussein (not a difficult task) and throwing barbs at all the critics of plans to unleash the cluster bombs and depleted uranium on the weak and starved nation as being naive coddlers of "evil," even prematurely mocking former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter for suggesting that the war might be unwinnable.
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Summary: double standard
Review: Similar points that support the war in Iraq have been made (though with less eloquency and wit) also by Thomas Friedman. Hitchens argues that Turkey has no rights over Iraq, which is very true indeed, and therefore can not send troops to Northern Iraq. (see the article in the book "an ally we are better without") Well, in the same way U.S. claims to have a security problem with Iraq, Turkey has a "more real" security problem over there too and it is not some hype like uranium enriching Saddam with Al-Queda connections. A guerilla army of 5000 Kurdish fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a party with a Shining-Path type agrarian Marxist ideology and with a leader Hitchens himself refers to as a Kurdish Pol-Pot (he met and interviewed him), is encamped in Northern Iraq. This is a force that has been waging a war of separation from Turkey for the last 20 years. It is a different issue to advise Turkey to deal with the demands of her Kurdish population through less military more democratic means, which I agree. But such an option for no military action and diplomatic channels existed for U.S. too, the United Nations Security Council and international peace movement etc. It is Hitchens' who does not agree that a peaceful option against Iraq was possible. The issue is justifying military action by relying on arguments of security threat and I believe it is a double standard to argue that U.S. has a right to invade Iraq due to security reasons but Turkey cannot pursue similar goals in Northern Iraq. In my opinion, neither Turkey nor U.S. has any case whatsoever to intervene militarily. It is a double standard that Hitchens supports one military action and detests the other, although they are both based on very similar "security instincts". It does not make any sense at all to argue that guerilla army of 5000 encamped across Turkey's border is not a security threat for Turkey, but some ragtag band of 150 Islamist fanatics called Ansar-Al Islam is a security threat for the U.S.
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Summary: A view from the Left
Review: This collection is classic Hitchens. Eloquently, convincingly and with wit he makes the case for why neutrality in the battle against fascism is not an option. And in doing so he eviscerates those who thinks that such a truce is possible or --worse -- desirable. It's a quick read but it should not be missed.
Rating: 
Summary: A collection of newspaper columns more than a book
Review: This is a very short book which appears to be a collection of newspaper columns rather than a book written about the topic. The theme is pretty simple and often repeated. That is that Saddam Hussien was a cruel and dictatorial ruler and it was a good idea to give him the boot. Clearly this was very much the case and anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of current affairs will be aware of his invasions of Iran and Kuwait, the murder of his own people such as the Kurds using poison gas and the brutally oppressive nature of his regime. However the war over Iraq was a complex issue. It is legal to invade another country because its government is bad? The answer is probably no, however there was no discussion about the complexity of the issue. Was it reasonable to invade Iran as it had breached the UN resolutions that had formally ended the first Gulf War? The answer was probably no but maybee. This is an issue again which depended on the structure of those resolutions. They had been breached but did that sanction US as opposed to US action. The means used by the US and British government to explain the war to their own people appears in retrospect to be disingenuous if not dishonest. Suggestions were made that Iraq was importing uranium for a nuclear program. This was simply not true as was the allegation that large numbers of aluminium tubes were being imported to make a enrichment plant. This book is in reality mono dimensional and whilst the one central point it makes is true, it fails to examine or discuss what was a complex reality. One might also add that its portrayal of the opposition to the war did not rise above caricature.
Rating: 
Summary: Inconsistent at Best
Review: This is the same author that wrote a book claiming Kissinger was a war criminal. Why is it okay to bomb one country but not bomb another? It is highly subjective and arbitrary, independent of whether one supports the concept of regime change in Iraq or not, be the motivations noble or imperialist. Neither Kissinger in his day nor Bush and Blair now had any international legal authority for their actions. Both were the acts of a big power against a small country thousands of miles away. Neither Chile nor Vietnam nor Iraq were about to invade the US and bomb Washington. Jack in Toronto
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Summary: great bang for the buck
Review: This short, inexpensive book is very worthwhile. Most of it was written before the liberation of Iraq and reading it, I was amazed how prescient Hitchens was. If you need to give an anti-war friend a gift and a tweak, this book would be perfect.
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Summary: Hitchens does it again but the book is weak
Review: This was a cute book. Its about the size of half a deck of cards, and far less discerning. Hitchens should develop this into a real book, but he suffers from jurnalists disease(writing short stories and publishing them as real books when they should be sold as a Zean on the street by kids). Beyond the faults, if you can find this book its worth a thumb through for the fact that Hitchens shows the fallacy of the left liberal argument that the war in Iraq was a mistake. Lets analyze his points:
1) Saddam is a viscious dictator, he murdered hundreds of thousands of 'peaceful' muslims. The left loves Saddam. But the left also loves the same people he rounded up and shot in the swamps of iraq(these people are mostly terrorists and fundamentalists). The left seems to love everyone in iraq, no matter how viscious and brutal. Our war will make Iraq more peacefull.
2) THey call this a war for oil. At the same time that Liberals want us to wean ourselves of Saudi oilt they wont let us drill in Alaska or find oil in other muslim states. Well Iraq has oil, but if we buy it from saddam he will build bombs, so we took out saddam and now we get the oil and we leave Saudi, so our troops will no longer be on muslim 'peaceful' holy land.
3) Liberals say some kids will die in our attack. Daily saddam steals the 'oil for food' money and builds weapons and gives the money to his military. Saddam murders kids daily but somehow the fact that we might have to kill a few to save them all is wrong. Hitchens explodes the myths of the anti war movement showing the fallacies in an off the cuff, seat of th epants dieary like format, an interesting book.
Rating:
Summary: Too late, too late
Review: Unfortunately, reality has caught up with Hitchins. What might have seemed thoughtful in July has been proved wrong in August. If you haven't read the book before, don't bother...unless you, knowing what you do, enjoy watching someone crawl farther and farther out on a limb.
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