Two years after the invasion of Iraq, British MP George Galloway and journalist Christopher Hitchens debate the causes and consequences of the Iraq war. Amy Goodman (good luck!) is moderating the debate.
Watch/listen LIVE via Democracy Now! or KPFT/Pacifica radio.
Live blog here! Update [2005-9-14 19:28:1 by susanhu]: The debate will now begin at 4:30pm PT/7:30pm ET due to an overwhelming sell-out crowd and the need for security checks at the door.
Our Ask is there (check Ask’s diary from this morning on this debate). The BBC is carrying this debate on its morning show tomorrow. C-SPAN will show this debate on tape delay sometime in the next two days.
Update [2005-9-14 20:24:42 by susanhu]: BookTV (C-SPAN2) will air this debate on Saturday, September 17 at 9:00 pm and Sunday, September 18 at 12:00 pm and Monday, September 19 at 5:30 am. It will also be available, at any time, via Democracy Now!.
 Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington: The Brit Who Set Congress Straight about Iraq |
 The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and The Media That Love Them |
They’re still waiting to start. It’s been delayed because of the extraordinary measures taken for security — there were apparently concerns after people monitored rightwing radio programs and heard remarks that concerned them. All bags, etc. are being checked via metal detector.
Susan, I finally got a stream but I’m listening to the execution of Frances Newton in Texas. Did I get into the wrong stream? I followed the links fron DN! website. At first all the servers were at capacity and finally, I got through, but …
Oh, well, I can catch it on BBC in the morning… THAT I can get.
I got on via kpft.org — there are numerous choices.
I got on via WinAmp, which brought up my ITunes broadcaster.
Keep trying!
I finally got through. Oh Lord, Galloway is on a tear!!! I won’t be blogging after this, because I don’t have enough bandwidth and don’t want to loose my connection.
Sorry, Brinn… it’s over.
Have they done it? I couldn’t bear to find out on the usual sources…an hour ago? Is Frances gone?
Please do answer, but I think I know already.
Yes.
It will start at 4:30pm PT/7:30pm ET.
They said, so far, they have over 7500 people listening .. hope you can make it on. Let me know if you are listening.
The crowd noise is exciting… I can feel the excitement. Ask must be thrilled to be there.
Was there with curly at 6.25 with camera and notepad. Lines around the block and all sold out. Separate line with hundreds still trying to get a ticket – I checked up front at the entrance and there was no way. Back home now and will try to bring up your link. 🙁
BUMMER! I learned the hard way from going to Howard Dean events that one has to be there hours in advance 🙁
I hope you’ll help me blog .. i have to pick up my daughter very soon and so must leave for about 1/2 hour.
Same problem as Nag reported. I get the Texas-execution. Will keep searching. Meanwhile, let me bring you this:
Bush needs a bathroom brake while in the General Assembly, writes note to Condi. It seems legit – check the link and rate it up!
Did you go here?
http://kpftx.org/#galloway
I clicked on WinAmp here, and am listening. There are about 8 links you can try:
Audio Links – click to listen
Winamp Windows Other
Direct Links
One Two Three Four
Video Link to Democracy Now!
(I am so sorry about Frances. Those executions give Texas a very, very bad reputation … but it’s wonderful to have met so many Texans who are opposed to such cruelty and insanity.)
Thanks Susan,
I was on that page (also hitchens page, which led back to kpftx), either ‘server already full’, nothing or texas. Ah well.
If I could make it happen, I’d give up my stream and give it to you … i’ll surely watch it again on Booktv.org
Someday, I’m going to have get out the built-up bile I have in me about the peace movement, dating back the Vietnam War days… and everyone shouting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF Is Gonna Win” and PRAISING tyrants like Stalin and Mao all the time. If the words weren’t in Mao’s little red book, it couldn’t be true. It really got rather extreme. I also found it terminally boring, and left it.
(I think people romanticize that era, and the protests, far too much.) Now, having spewed out that bit of bile, I must say I don’t care to debate it at this moment in time…
Alright.
I was actually a good young conservative when I first became politically aware (?) in the early ’70s (though a Norwegian conservative doesn’t count for much here – the party implementing social democratic ideas when in power).
Thanks for your efforts, I’ll try to catch it on CPAN-2 over the weekend.
Chris Hitchens begins by asking for a moment of silence in respect for the 160+ who died today in Iraq.
Feels honored to be speaking at the Baruch College named for Bernard Baruch who famously campaigned for control of nuclear weapons …
hitchensweb.com – can download audio — i think he said
“Only those of us who supported the regime change have any explaining to do? What would have happened had the anti-war groups been listened to … you’d have a world inwhich the following would be the case … Hussein would be occupier of Kuwait … one consequence of anti-war politics … Milosevic would have been Bosnia part of Serbia .. the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda would still be their guests … and Saddam Hussein and his crime gang would still hold terrifying sway of its people …
stop continual capitulation to such regimes ….
i can’t type this fast
Hitchens is a nutcase. he can not stay on topic for doing his preaching against Saddam..now Galloway is up for his 15 mins.
Galloway is using the Pat Lang debate points from his post last night….
that Hitchens is one of those who insists on fighting until the last drop of blood is spilled.
… of someone else’s blood. Can’t wait for the transcript.
omg, galloway called hitchens a slug..and that a slug leaves a trail of slime behind him. he is giving cindy a plug. hitchens called cindy a flake and galloway is tearing him apart for all this bru ha ha..I think soon there will soon be a duke the out…it is so exciting…oh hell it is going to be so exciting.
This is fun!
Amy announced the times/dates for CSPAN2 / http://www.booktv.org …
Saturday at 6PM PT/ 9PM ET — and again on Sunday at noon ET, i think she said — and again on Monday.
(I was making a cup of coffee when she gave those days/times so I hope i got it right.)
and she said the audio/video will be available at http://www.democracynow.org
BRENDA! What are those people shouting at George Galloway?
did not get it either…
galloway said if hitchens wanted thsi war so badly he should pick up a gun and go fight himself instead of sitting back talking about the good things of thsi war. galloway said that of which was no wmds and no connection with iraq and al queada no connection to 9/11 ..etc..
And the U.S. and Great Britain are the two biggest rogue nations on the face of the earth.
now it’s Hitchen’s turn …
Oh I so envy the British.
They debate fabulously. I wish us Americans did that.
Greg Palast today warns us not to put too much stock in Galloway:
As much as Hitchens is most definitely a slug and a waste of oxygen, I think Palast raises some rather important questions about Galloway (who apparently refuses to answer Palast).
now we are to the 10 min rebuttal…hitchens is doing his spitting of venum back to galloway…man on man is this good!!!!!!!!!!! he is calling galloway names now..
I must say that I heartily agree with Hitchens about the Muslim extremists and to take issue with him on that is to embrace their fundamentalism, repression, and violent tendencies.
I agree with this point by Hitchens also. HOWEVER, Hitchens deliberately neglects to ac`knowledge that these particular kind of murderous jihadi psychopath did not manifest themselves in Iraq until we invaded. In other words, Hitchens is disingenuously blasting Galloway for supporting the “resistance” in Iraq while refusing to admit that our presence there is the stimulus for that resistance.
Even drunk out of his skull Hitchens is a formidable debater. His clever sophistry is usually deliberately disingenuous and designed to ridicule rather than challenge on factual grounds. He’s particularly adept at the use of partial truth as a vehicle for deception, andI’m sure his most recent allegations against Galloway would not survive close scrutiny intact in the context in which they were presented.
Galloway has grand oratorical skills and I agree with most of his broader points. But he’s not that skilled of a debater, and he has trouble also defending his sometimes overwrought language from a factual foundation as well. Many of his own actions and previous statements should give us pause lest we let our eagerness to embrace him in toto make us look like fools for doing so later.
I do think that galloway has some points tho. hitchens is a drunk. he has been so hung over at times of interviews I have seen it has been terrible. i will let galloway defend himself. what i have heard come from his mouth, is the truth. after all we gave hussain his wmds in the first damn place.
Hitchens does look hung over a lot. For many years, I’ve found his writing bracing, informing, defiantly wise.
And he does have a legitimate breach with the peace movement’s passivity, at times, against tyrants.
Intervention is sometimes called for. In Rwanda. Etc. And I was in favor of the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan, although we — of course — have completely blown that mission by invading Iraq for no known reason.
oh I agree with you there on this one. I just do not know what to think of all this rough and tough rheteric. I have not like hitchens much at all tho. he is someone I do not think I could trust. n ow for galloway, i do not know what to think of him. he comes on very stong…. he tends to go way beyond lots of history on things that hitchens has done and said. i simply do not know the history of hitchens.
I’ll take Jesus, Ghandi and MLK over Christopher Hitchens and day. We pretend we have but two choices, do nothing or war. That denies the best of us, our humanity, our creativity, our intelligence and our potential. To defeat tyranny, not just tyrants, it takes the very best of us all.
susan, i did not get that which you refer to…what did hitchens say?
I have to leave to pick up my daughter at work … be back soonest!
Brenda, you’re in charge!
Ok, call me naive, ignorant or whatever, but I have been listening to this for the last 10 minutes and really, I cannot figure out why I should continue!
What am I missing?? Two pompous self-congratulatory blowhards yabbering on…
Why is this important? [not a rhetorical question]
i do think you have a point there….;o) I am having great trouble understanding much of what both are saying..I do understand that both want a piece of the other. it is really raw in my opinion.
Don’t know about importance, but after seeing Galloway rip Norm Coleman a new one back in May, I must admit I remain curious to what he says on the issue of Iraq. Since I could not get on, I don’t know what was said today – apart from the references above.
Oh, they’re still going — Hitchen is DEFTLY NOT answering the question that Amy Goodman just asked him — oh, wait, here he goes sort of answering…
Basically, he is saying that W didn’t deceive us about WMD and now that he doens’t give a damn what Colin Powell says about anything….
Ick. Can’t listen anymore — sorry, this is just the interblog bickering in front of a freaking live audience.
No offense to anyone who is genuinely interested, I just can’t take it.
Yes! This is entertainment masquerading as news, something our MSM is famous for.
Neither Galloway or Hitchens have any measurable influence on anything regarding public policy, and neither one is likely to be instrumental in swaying any significant percentage of public opinion one way or the other.
This entire spectacle is really nothing more than rhetorical mud-wrestling, ultimately boring and insignificant.
i think galloway has touched on some israli history and this is a group of ppl sitting out there that is choosen to go the direction of said topic..isreali benefits…sure sounds like it to me. hitchens speaks like he is very learned of this whole mess…like i think he is in some ways but not that he is always right.
You work for the devil.
Holy moly George.
folks, I do think we will ahve to wait for the transcript to really know in what direction these two men are goin in. I simply can not follow either of them much. sorry…all I know is that they are putting on a show of it……
Galloway’s points right now are very powerful — about the privatization of Iraq, incl. that of farmers — an Iraq Americana, he calls it.
Galloway said he laughs at Hitchens going on about “foreign fighters.”
“Which part of Iraq is General Myers from?”
I can not wait to see the transcript of this debate. I think I would get more out of it that way as by listing to them tonight. Anyhow I think galloway held his own against the hitchens. Hitchens is good at twisting his words IMO
Brinnaine made some good criticisms of this debate. And the post-debate commentators said that many comments on their own blog said that this debate ended up being more about personality than the issues.
THAT said, the richness in the use of language, and the fearless frankness, are so vastly preferable to the somniloquists who pass for politicians in this country.
Brilliant debaters, so I imagine those of you who watched/listened got some good entertainment. On the other hand, substantively, what’s the point. Galloway is scum whose only guide to right and wrong is whether or not a specific group is anti-American or not – pro-American dictatorships bad, anti-American ones good; US fundies bad, anti-US fundies good. Hitchens for his part has sold his soul to the neo-cons and turned pure shill.