A war to be proud of

Christopher Hitchens, a consistently thought provoking British left-wing columnist, who is eloquently and piercingly critical of almost anything that moves (Ronald Reagan, Michael Moore, Henry Kissinger, Cindy Sheehan etc.), has a magisterial article (via RCP) in the Weekly Standard.

A War to Be Proud Of - The case for overthrowing Saddam was unimpeachable. Why, then, is the administration tongue-tied?

Let me begin with a simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad."
I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?

He goes on to forcefully make the case for the war in Iraq, and in the process skewers the Bush administration for not doing so itself. The result is a masterpiece: absolutely do read the whole thing.