“I don't think that the figure 2000 is an important milestone, in the first place. And in the second place, I don't think that this can be determined by public opinion. The righteousness of the war was not demonstrated by public support for it in the beginning, nor its wisdom altered by the evident decline in public support for it. I don't pay attention to the opinion polls, or indeed to the casualty figures, because I know that this is an inevitable war, a war that was going to have to happen — and was, in my opinion, both just and necessary.”
Scotland Live (2005-10-31): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2005
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Christopher Hitchens 305
British American author and journalist 1949–2011Related quotes

Source: United States. Congress. Senate (1964) Hearings, Vol. 4, p. 177: Of the Vietnam War

As quoted in MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6895182/ (31 January 2005)
2000s, 2005

CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer (23 April 2006).
"The next … months" in Iraq
“I don't have a sense of sanctuary. I don't have a place where I think I can go.”
Interview with Bill Moyers, Now, PBS (28 November 2003)
Context: I don't have a sense of sanctuary. I don't have a place where I think I can go. I once went to the famous Kyoto temple with the Zen garden, the gravel, the little mounds and it's, you know, it's been pictured over and over and over again. And what they don't tell you is that this little acre or some acre of serenity is surrounded by millions of people taking pictures.
So it sounds like a storm of mosquitoes constantly. And it never stops. And there's no serenity. And so not even in Japan can I find sanctuary.

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

2000s
Context: Antonin Scalia: It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. It's the — the cross is the — is the most common symbol of — of — of the resting place of the dead, and it doesn't seem to me — what would you have them erect? A cross — some conglomerate of a cross, a, and you know, a Moslem half moon and star?
Peter Eliasberg: Well, Justice Scalia, if I may go to your first point. The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew. [Laughter. ] So it is the most common symbol to honor Christians.
Antonin Scalia: I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion.

As quoted in "Interview with Shepard Smith" https://web.archive.org/web/20120501134518/http://www.esquire.com/features/shepard-smith-fox-news-0309-2 (February 10, 2009), by Tom Junod, Esquire, Hearst Communications Inc.
2000s

“I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.”
2000s, 2002