Matt's Reviews > The Trial of Henry Kissinger

This is excellent stuff.

Kissinger is the kind of public figure non-political junkies might know a bit about but haven't really got a full grasp on yet. He's vaguely, smellingly evil in other words.

This book brings it all out into the open.

Hitchens writes clearly and devastatingly, with understatement. He lets the facts do the talking. And they do a LOT of talking.

Basically, Hitch is a journalist and has hated Kissinger for years but he has a strong prosecutorial streak and he in effect puts Kissinger on the stand and cross-examines him for all to see.

If you are curious about why this man is so hated you won't be too surprised when you get about halfway through, and if you keep up your attention you will be squirming with rage by the end of it and you have absorbed all the facts.

There's so much more to mine here, Hitchens has reams of information and factual backup detail that he deliberately excluded it on account of the structure of the book. He kept it so that it would at least be a contribution to the case against letting Kissinger get off scot-free. The man sounds pretty fucking guilty, is what I mean. And he was recently seen to have been routinely whispering in the ear of none other than our beloved VP, Dancin' Dick Cheney.

He's right on target and it seems there's no escape.

It illuminates some of the very creepy and more than Machiavellian machinations of the political movements of the right wing for over half a century.

I mean, we're talking Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Greece...the list of shady things Hank has done has got to be unending. The thing is, the list Hitchens has compiled is sufficient to make a pretty damn near shut case for putting the old wrinkly prick on the docket.

Let's hope this candle doesn't die out in our lifetimes!