OK, OK, we get it already ("Karl Marx: Reporter," 16 June): Christopher Hitchens is Karl Marx and George W. Bush is Abraham Lincoln: journalist extraordinnaire and visionary leader, who alone can perceive the world-historical import of events, high above the petty carping of "the Pharisees." Oh yes, what an uncanny parallel, and evoked with such exquisite subtlety.

This ludicrous, self-regarding mummery might be amusing under other circumstances. But while Bush and his ever-prolix sycophant prance about in their borrowed robes, countless thousands keep dying in the dirty war that the prancers so ardently champion -- a criminal folly whose conduct, causes and purposes bear about as much relation to the American Civil War as our pampered, power-stroking author bears to, well, Karl Marx.