This evening on CNN's "The Situation Room," anchor Paula Zahn hosted a brief discussion on the Iraq War with writers Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens.

She began with:  "Let's bring in a pair of conservatives with distinctly different points of view, Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens."

But Mr. Hitchens wasn't going to let that introduction pass:

ZAHN: Good to see both of you.

So Christopher, at a time...

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, "VANITY FAIR": I'm not a conservative.

ZAHN: Our pleasure.

At a time when the time American population....

HITCHENS: No, no, wait. You didn't get it. I'm not a conservative.

ZAHN: Not a conservative?

HITCHENS: No, thank you.

ZAHN: How would you characterize yourself?

HITCHENS: Well, I have no party affiliation and no ideological one. But I'm no kind of conservative.

ZAHN: All right. Well, let's find more about how you specifically feel about this war.

Ms. Zahn then continued the segment.  But one has to wonder how it was that she or her producer or someone at CNN could have believed that Christopher Hitchens was a conservative in the first place.  Is it because CNN does such poor fact-checking or is it because CNN staffers would consider a man who's demanded Henry Kissinger be tried for war crimes "a conservative?"

Either way, it reflects very poorly on "the most trusted name in news."