THEY don't call him Christopher "Comical British Alcoholic" Hitchens for nothing. The warmonger, whose attempt to link his pro-conflict positions with the work of George Orwell offended the sensibilities of anyone who has ever read George Orwell, is at it again. "Hitch Is Not Great: How Everything In My Body Is Filled With Poison, Particularly My Liver" hits bookstores next month. The jeremiad, reports The Post's Kyle Smith, is a merciless attack on everything Hitchens holds dear—dryly called "absolutely fucking right" by its editor, Jonathan Karp, who is making it the second title in his new imprint, 12, because that's how many vodkas he drank before deciding to publish Hitchens.

"I have retarded the development of civilization," writes Hitchens; he goes on to call himself "a self-centered fantasist and an Scotch-centered ignoramus" and "a washed-up former Trotskyite who decided he wanted to be on the winning side for once and wound up advocating the biggest disaster in the history of U.S. foreign policy." But the Hitch is just getting warmed up.

* On Bush: " 'Bush is in the details?' He isn't in ours, unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for his clumsiness, failure and incompetence."
* On his Slate columns: "I simply laugh when I read my Slate columns, with their endless obfuscations about yellowcake and their corrupt promise of a peaceful Middle East in the life to come."
* On his support for the conflict in Iraq: "A mask for a very deep and probably justifiable insecurity . . . not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of self-rationalizations, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - that can even begin to justify such arrogance."
* On women being taught to read: "The inculcation of compulsory stupidity."
* On Cheney: "A 'fakir and guru' whose belief in primitive intelligence meant that "hundreds of thousands of people have been maimed and wounded because his advice has been followed."
* On Colin Powell: "His absurd [speech to the U.N.] contained more lies than a two minute conversation with Ari Fleischer."
* On Bush again: "A hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient!"
* On himself: "Commandingly authoritarian and bloody-minded" and given to "genocidal incitements." Also "ready for another round, on someone's expense account."

ONE HELL OF A RELIGIOUS READ [NYP]