Informative piece -- but please don't paint the anti-war movement with the broad brush as the good guys and the pro-war crowd as soulless minions of the devil. Hitchens has indeed become a "rightwing ranter," as you put it, but for most of his career he was distinctly on the left (with Trot tendencies, like his now-Tory brother Peter). Explaining his conversion to the right merits explanation, since we might derive some important political lessons for the movement from it.

As for Mother Teresa. Hitchens's pre-conversion critique of her is deserved, because she was ALWAYS a rightwing nut-case. The mythology surrounding her is ridiculous and is largely Malcolm Muggeridge's doing. (Have you actually read Hitchens's Missionary Position?) At best she was utterly clueless but needed to be reined in politically because she mouthed off about all sorts of issues, and at worst she was a parasitical proselyte to the sick and dying poor and a devious little propagandist for the papacy. (Not to mention her own weird political agenda, including being an Albanian nationalist....)

As for "Gorgeous George," as Galloway is sometimes called in Britain, he makes a lot of valid points, but he is a notorious loose cannon and sucker for the limelight, which makes a lot of politically astute people shy away from him eventually. Personally, I thought the "debate" between him and Hitchens amounted mainly to a lot of ad hominem bashing on both sides, and therefore wasn't very productive.

Keep up the good fight, but keep a critical perspective.

MFL