Hitchens writes:

"If the Kosovo intervention really was humane and disinterested, as its
proponents
claim, then (he demands) what about East Timor? The book was written before
the international detachments arrived in Dili and before the Indonesian
occupiers sailed away. And, though that intervention was disgracefully late
(and no punishment was visited on Indonesian forces or "infrastructure"), I
cannot think of any other grounds on which Chomsky could have opposed it."

Here we get into serious misrepresentations of facts that NATO apologists
rely on regularly.  The idea that the US was not "intervening" in East Timor
is reprehensible, in addition to being patently false.  The US has been
intervening for decades-- who do you think supplied the M-16's, the C-130's,
much of the air power, much of the ammunition, the UN protection (according
to Moynihan, who bragged about getting in the way of any efforts to enforce
resolutions calling for the withdrawal without delay), the economic support,
the training of Kopassus and other military intelligence?  If you do not
call this intervention, you will be sorely unequipped to understand global
politics.  This idea of selective "intervention" (just because we can't help
everyone everywhere doesn't mean we can't help some of the people some of
the time) rests on a deeply flawed framework.  The US intervention has been,
in East Timor's case, systematic, brutal, and utterly necessary to Suharto's
invasion.

"Still, it
seems to be obvious that without the Kosovo operation and the exalted
motives that were claimed for it, the pressure to save East Timor would have
been considerably less."

Here, if I am reading Hitchens correctly, he attributes the moralistic
fervor kicked up briefly in the US as a useful means to pressure the US to
do the right thing in E Timor (or at least to stop doing the wrong thing).
This is an interesting point, and seems somewhat sensible.  Because the US
was claiming to be an enforcer of human rights, when possible, it became
less possible to continue promoting, arming, and financing the atrocities in
E Timor.  However, this argument does not address the basic issue up for
discussion by Tresy-- namely that the NATO bombing was a moral intervention.
The fervor of moralism and sanctimoniousness can certainly be stirred up in
the NY Times and Washington Post regardless of whether the state behaves
morally.  Hitchens is not addressing the fundamental issues involved in the
NATO bombing.  He merely muses about some possible beneficial uses of
hypocrisy.

Soren