Christopher Hitchens – Vanity Fair columnist and the man who told Rachel Sklar she wasn't funny – couldn't possibly pass up the opportunity to aim his cannon at those behind Saddam Hussein's hanging. Or, as Hitchens calls it, "lynching," though that's usually a term we reserve for people like Emmett Till — you know, men and women who didn't deserve a noose around their necks.

The shabby, tawdry scene of Muqtada Sadr's riffraff taunting their defenseless former tyrant evokes exactly this quality of hysterical falsity and bravado. While Saddam Hussein was alive, they cringed. Now, they find their lost courage, and meanwhile take the drill and the razor blade and the blowtorch to their fellow Iraqis. To watch this abysmal spectacle as a neutral would be bad enough. To know that the U. S. government had even a silent, shamefaced part in it is to feel something well beyond embarrassment.

Correct: Not embarassment. Hilarity is what you should be feeling. With no women around, it sure was a hoot, eh Chris?