How does Christopher Hitchens do it? Before the rest of us have had our morning coffee, the British-born savant has already polished off 5,000 breezy words for Vanity Fair, a polemic for the New Republic, a book review for the Atlantic, a Viagra confessional for Maxim, and a half-gallon of Scotch. The man sneezes copy.

But his latest column on Slate, a self-administered Q&A entitled "So, Mr. Hitchens, Weren't You Wrong About Iraq?" betrays the secret behind his impressive output: He doesn't waste time reading newspapers.

Who but a man unfamiliar with current events would pose the following question about the Bush Administration's unremitting justification for war: "Was the terror connection not exaggerated?" Then earnestly answer: "Not by much. The Bush Administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001."

When the Hitch emerges from his latest blackout, he will be pleasantly surprised to find that he proved at least one point in his Slate article, albeit unintentionally. "The question" of whether he was wrong on Iraq, he writes, "Isn't as easy to answer as some people would have you believe." And it really does look like he had a tough time of it.

Seeing as he's been stretched so thin of late, we took the trouble of assembling a handy, fact-filled news digest to help him get up to speed on the past few years. Let's get the ball rolling:

Directly after September 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only three percent of those polled mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.

By August 2003, nearly 70 percent of Americans believed it likely that Hussein was personally involved in the attacks carried out by Al Qaeda, according to a Washington Post poll.

Now, how could such a monumental shift in public perception have occurred over such a short period of time if the Bush Administration never "claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001"? Take a moment to focus, Hitch. It's been pretty widely reported:

• In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11... The overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks.—CSM, March 14, 2003

• In making the case for war in Iraq, Bush Administration officials frequently cited what they said were Saddam's decade-long contacts with Al Qaeda operatives.—MSNBC, June 16, 2004

• Vice President Dick Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own Administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.... Details that Cheney cited to make the case that the Iraqi dictator had ties to Al Qaeda have been dismissed by the CIA as having no basis, according to analysts and officials.

...But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally televised interview two days ago, claiming that the Administration is learning "more and more" about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks. The statement surprised some analysts and officials who have reviewed intelligence reports from Iraq.—Boston Globe, September 16, 2003

See? Reading is fun! There's more:

• President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top Administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

...As recently as Monday, Cheney said in a speech that Hussein "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." Bush, asked on Tuesday to verify or qualify that claim, defended it by pointing to Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has taken credit for a wave of attacks in Iraq.

...In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official before the attacks, in April 2000 in Prague.

...In September, Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press: "If we're successful in Iraq ... then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

...The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
—Washington Post, June 17, 2004

Had our favorite ex-pat watched the president's televised address in 2005 marking the one-year anniversary of the U.S. handover of sovereignty in Iraq, he may have been confused, like so many Americans during so many similar speeches over the last four years, as to what Bush was getting at:

In a bid to shore up flagging domestic support for the war, Bush said the war against terror had "reached our shores" on September 11 and that sacrifices in Iraq were "vital to the future security of our country."—CNN, June 29, 2005

But none of this proves the Administration ever deliberately misled us, right Hitch? For that, we'd need some pretty serious evidence of intent. If you get a moment, take a look at what Richard Clarke, Bush's former top anti-terrorism on 9/11, had to say on 60 Minutes back in March, 2004:

The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, "I want you to find whether Iraq did this." Now he never said, "Make it up." But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.... I said, "Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection." He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection." And in a very intimidating way.... We wrote a report.

Hope we've been able to fill in some holes for you, sir. Now get back to your typewriter before it gets cold.