The Guardian: "The Big Showdown"

The usually wrong-headed Guardian has something worthwhile you would actually expect of them: a good account of the Hitchens-Galloway debate. I listened to most of the debate on the internet, and I understand why many seem reluctant to ascribe victory to Hitchens. Of course, he had all the rationality and facts at his disposal, but Galloway's crude bluster was so completely in another ball-park that it was almost as if Hitchens was the narrator of a documentary about Galloway. Somehow a debating victory should have a different feel. In any event, here's the Guardian:

At last Hitchens and Galloway took their positions at podiums on either side of the stage, neither looking at the other. Among the audience was Oona King, the former Labour MP defeated by Galloway in Bethnal Green. In his beard and open-necked casual blue shirt, the Englishman resembled the part-time college lecturer that he in fact is. Galloway, by fastidious contrast, was wearing a beige suit with a carefully co-ordinated tie, his bronze pate shining under the stage lights. Hitchens began his proposal - 'the war in Iraq is just and necessary' - by calling for a minute's silence for the 160 Iraqis murdered that morning in Baghdad by al-Qaeda.

There were instant boos and hails of protest from some members of the audience. In July in Syria Galloway had given a speech celebrating the '145 military operations every day' made by 'these poor Iraqis - ragged people with their sandals and their Kalashnikovs ...' But the Iraqis killed on Wednesday were poor labourers looking for work and they were blown apart by sophisticated explosives. It was not clear to me at least why they were unworthy of a minute's silence.

In many ways, the level of debate never recovered from this indecency. Both speakers accused one another of sinking to the gutter and both made direct attacks on the other, though it was Galloway who was perhaps the more personal. Seeking to trump the 'drink-sodden former Trotskyist popinjay' remark with which he had bested Hitchens outside the Senate committee meeting back in May, he reflected on his earlier admiration for the writer. He had gone on to make natural history, said Galloway, 'by metamorphosing from a butterfly into a slug'. After that he then accused Hitchens of being 'ready to fight to the last drop of other people's blood'.

These were prepared insults that may have pleased a section of the crowd but said nothing about the situation in Iraq today, much less the situation under Saddam. But the cheers that they elicited appeared to lift Galloway, or at least the volume of his voice, till he reached a pitch of finger-waving declamation that was both comical and a little frightening to behold. Even the moderator, the less than neutral anti-war broadcaster, Amy Goodman, was moved to ask Galloway to place the microphone further away from his mouth.