Quote of the day: Hitchens on Iraq & Libya

Free soil:

The immediate task now is to assimilate those lessons, shorten the time in which the knowledge gained can be applied, call the evil by its right name, and face Qaddafi with a stark choice between his own death and his appearance in the dock. It is morally unthinkable that he should emerge from this episode with even a rag of authority to call his own, and it is morally feeble not to say so out loud. The ugly and clumsy words mission creep take on a sudden beauty all of their own. When the Arab League meets in May, it should welcome a new Libyan provisional government on the soil of a free Iraq. Then we will have closed the circle—and vindicated all those brave people who fell in bringing down the first and worst bastion of the ancien regime.