In this week's The New Yorker,

Ian Buruma's "Kimworld: Inside the North Korean Slave State"

discusses that topic in the form of reviews of the recent books by Bradley K. Martin ("Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty")and Jasper Becker ("Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea".)

The letter has been cited at length on right-wing message boards, most of which link to post in Google's discussion boards, where the letter is printed in full. I thought parts of the letter were suspicious, as if they had been written by someone with military experience. Notice the how the how the author uses acronyms, place names and dates in this paragraph:

The very worst thing of all, is that my son was sent to rescue some fellow soldiers trapped in an ambush in the back of a LMTV..which is basically an open air trailer. It would be the equivalent of driving through Dallas on 11/22/63 in a Convertible. The troops stationed at FOB War Eagle were sent ahead of their tanks and Bradleys!!!

In her post on DailyKos, Sheehan seems to confirm that the letter was altered, possibly by someone she copied in on the original e-mail:

I wrote the letter to Ted Bettag [at ABC, I'm assuming] and cc'd a copy to the person who gave me Ted's address. I believe he (the person who gave me the address) changed the email and sent it out to capitalize on my new found notoriety by promoting his own agenda. Enough about that.

So, does Hitch owe Cindy Sheehan an apology?