Now I won't lie this is a complicated issue and if you want to find out what it's about it requires something most of you lack - the will to read. Christopher Hitchens is no stranger to intellectual fights. His most famous one was when he tried taking on chomsky after 9/11 and he failed, horribly. He eventually left "The Nation" (The magazine which hosted the article battle between chomsky and hitchens) because he was so embarassed..also because his ideology was changing. Hitchens was a renowned Trotskyist, he advocated suicide bombers in Palestine and was for the vietcong in vietnam and is also known for making fun of charlton heston before the first gulf war because he couldn't name 5 surrounding states around Iraq. However 9/11 abruptly changed him and he embraced neo-conservistism. For me he is a skilled writer but lately I have lost faith in him because of his reckless and useless attempts at claiming intellectual superiority.
I won't say much about Juan cole because its pretty self explainitory. He runs a well run blog on Middle East current events and is set to be going to Yale as a Professor of Middle East Studies.
However the issue being debated here is about the mistranslation of the iranian president's claim that "Israel should be wiped off the face of the map" Cole (who speaks Arabic and Persian) believes that the quote is taken out of context and is rather - "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history."
Now that is the basics..I'd rather not write more because these links basically sum up the issue.
If you post in here saying "bullshit" please be sure you READ the links before you make your claims.
Summary of debate:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-sche ... 20350.html
Hitchens on Cole:
http://www.slate.com/id/2140947/
Cole on Hitchens:
http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchen ... chens.html
What MEMRI says:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page= ... D=SP101305
Another wrap:
http://www.liberaloasis.com/archives/050706.htm#050906
If any of you have questions..I'll try to answer them.