I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Shouldn't Tom's head be exploding from the cognitive dissonance?
Why isn't Tom just mercifully fired?
Really?
He doesn't speak Arabic. That says it all. Why the hell does the NY Times have a non-Arabic speaker as their premier Middle East correspondent?
Tom F#cking Friedman lives in a parallel universe where common sense has been replaced with Bushista demagoguery and propaganda.
The first time he lost me in his article is when he says:
"They know this is not a war for oil."
LOL. Given the priority the Bush administration gave to securing oil fields and energy resources, while the rest of Iraq was looted, I'm surprised there are people out there like Tom Friedmoron who actually believe this wasn't about OIL!
Also:
"They know this war is about Western powers, helped by the U.N., coming into the heart of their world to promote more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic governments by starting with Iraq"
As they pointed above, that's bullcrap. The UN and Western powers (except US and UK) opposed this war.
The hubris of this guy is worrisome.
So what does little Tommy have to say about Afghanistan these days? You know the great work we're doing over there making the Taliban look good (I didn't think that was possible). Does he have anything to say about the return of the Taliban? Of the constant infighting between rival warlords? Of the continued repression of women's rights? If anything was a harbinger of the mess we're making in Iraq it is the mess we already made in Afghanistan. We've turned a repressive home for terrorists into a slightly less repressive home for terrorists that has the drug trade as the basis of its economy. And Tommy say.....NOTHING.
Please would someone put T.F. down......
I don't read the NYT, can't stand it, but why do the provincial papers reprint his gibberish? I have to avert my eyes when I come across Tom.
go Google "narcissistic personality disorder".
It's all about Tom.
Save the Bunnies
My prior statement was off. "Bunnies" and "Skinnies" and "Gooks' aren't in any way different in intent. I apologize.
Is it possible Friedman has Alzheimer's?
Nah (answering my own question). He's always been dumb.
Since I began paying Tom Friedman attention, which is to say since 11 September, 2001, I've realized that he can only be appreciated as a collection of personalities. He is the Sibyl of the editorial pages.
Mr. Friedman is far more knowledgable about the history and current affairs of the mideast than I am.
But where I've got him and his paper beat is in the caliber of my political judgement in sizing up the Bush administration.
He believed, months ago- and his paper continues to believe- that the Bushites are honorable people. I know they are not.
And the twain shall never meet.
This is one way in which Iraq is clearly NOT another Vietnam. Our goals there were a model of clarity by comparison with the current adventure.
Wow, I never met anyone who could have an argument with himself before!
I do see how how he could hold both positions, but I could only imagine this if Tom was, in fact, a co-joined twin.
A fellow named Matt Taibbi performed a searing evisceration (I can only wish it were literally so ...) of Thomas Friedman a while back, in a column analyzing Friedman's writing and reasoning style. Taibbi clearly has an axe to grind with Friedman, he has "issues", a slight Friedman fixation ... and I love it! Check this one out:
http://www.nypress.com/
print.cfm...content_id=8251
Bring home the troops - send in the chickenhawks!
"... this war is about Western powers, helped by the U.N., coming into the heart of their world to promote more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic governments by starting with Iraq..."
I have to say I'm really sick of hearing how "women-friendly" we're making all these places. Are they not paying attention or are they just lying?
Boy, it sure sucks being raped but damn if it don't feel good not to have to wear a freakin' burka in August!
Tom Friedman sold his journalistic soul to the devil when he announced that he didn't care whether or not Bush had lied about WMD. That's a hell of a thing for a journalist to say in public. The fact that he was wiling to take the position publicly serves as evidence of the extent of the corruption which rots our media in the U.S.
Did anyone see Clare Short's editorial in the Guardian? (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/
0,2763,1028114,00.html)
Is it just me or does it bug the shit out of anyone else that people in other countries now routinely point to our media as an example of what they DON'T want to have happen to the media in their own country? Our open media used to set an example for the world -- a good one. Not any more.
He doesn't speak Arabic.
You're kidding, right? I read his work fairly regularly until he went off to lala land early this year. All along, I pegged him as a man who knows a great deal about the details of the situations in the Middle East (because he, as opposed to most commentators, actually spends some time there), but who can't fit the pieces together into a coherent picture. So I read him go see the pieces, and fit them myself into a picture that made more sense. But if he can't even fucking speak Arabic, then, well, it explains a whole lot about his inability to make sense of the details, doesn't it? How does this man stay employed?
"They know this is not a war for oil."
$6 or $60
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN- July 31, 2002
The scenario that could produce $6-a-barrel oil goes like this: Iraq under Saddam has been pumping up to two million barrels of oil a day, under the U.N. oil-for-food program. Let's say a U.S. invasion works and in short order Saddam is ousted and replaced by an Iraqi Thomas Jefferson, or just a "nice" general ready to abandon Iraq's nuclear weapons program and rejoin the family of nations.
That would mean Iraq would be able to modernize all its oilfields, attract foreign investment and in short order ramp up its oil production to its long-sought capacity of five million barrels a day. That is at least three million barrels of oil a day more on the world market, and Iraq, which will be desperate for cash to rebuild, is not likely to restrain itself. (Now you understand why Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait all have an economic interest in Saddam's staying in power and Iraq's remaining a pariah state, so it can't produce more oil.)
[...]
Bottom line: A quick victory that brings Iraq fully back into the oil market could lead to a sharp fall in oil incomes throughout OPEC that could seriously weaken the oil cartel and rob its many autocratic regimes of the income they need to maintain their closed political systems. In fact, give me sustained $10-a-barrel oil and I'll give you revolutions from Iran to Saudi Arabia, and throw in Venezuela.
If that scenario prevails, you could look at an invasion of Iraq as a possible two-for-one sale: destroy Saddam and destabilize OPEC at the same time. Buy one, get one free. But you better prepare for the consequences of both.
Friedman is expose like Wolfowitz.
Friedman is in love with himself and we are already over Friedman stupid self centered advices, thanks to the internet--I wonder can the NYT please tell Friedman this war isn't about his sorry ass? No more Pulitzers, Friedman got so full of himself he isn't worth shit anymore.
The people in Iraq are really suffering so someone should tell Friedman to stuff it. NYT please do the honors.
Tom should stay away from his professor-type "meetings." I think they're slipping some forbidden substance into his drinks.
Oh yes and this just in:
John McCain tell us we need more troops and more money in Iraq.
McCain says:
McCain Says U.S. Needs More Money, Troops in Iraq
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 24, 2003; Page A17
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said after visiting Baghdad last week that President Bush needs to level with the public about the need for more U.S. troops as well as dramatically more spending to make postwar Iraq peaceful enough for democracy to unfold.
McCain is asking for the DRAFT here people just in case you didn't catch the "US Troops" part that he was talking about.
McCain said that when he returns from the Middle East he plans to mount a heavy campaign on the issue in meetings with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other White House officials and during hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"We need to tell the American people directly, and I think they'll support it," McCain said from Islamabad, Pakistan. "We must win this conflict. We need a lot more military, and I'm convinced we need to spend a lot more money."
I called the Democratic Party and recommended a appellant judge that I kNOW wouldn’t mind running for congress and did the Arizona Democrat office listen. NO!
Where is George Soros when you need him? -- I want McCain OUT. I told you people he was a--hole.
Sometime I think the Dem’s are dead are something like that but NO fucking way my child is going to be drafted in Bush's lying fucking war - your dead meat Sen. McCain.
I going to talk to some Vietnam veterans and see if we someone else to representative the State of Arizona.
Most Vietnam vets that I know don't like this war AT ALL and DON'T like that Bush has cut their benefits. Arizona has to get rid of McCain and Howard Dean should really avoid any comparison of himself to McCain.
'Sodom' Hussein's Iraq
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN December 1, 2002
The U.N. inspectors in Iraq have begun their investigation of various Iraqi factories and military sites. Pay no attention. They will find nothing. The key to this whole inspection gambit — indeed, the key to whether we end up in a war with Iraq — will come down not to where the inspectors look inside Iraq, but whom they decide to interview outside Iraq, and whether that person has the courage to talk.
It takes just one person in Iraq who wants these inspections to be real, who wants Saddam to be exposed, and the whole house of cards comes down.
?Thinking about Iraq (2)? (I think)
My gut tells me we should continue the troop buildup, continue the inspections and do everything we can for as long as we can to produce either a coup or the sort of evidence that will give us the broadest coalition possible, so we can do the best nation-building job possible.
Two Right Feet
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN- May 14, 2003
"As someone who never believed Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction that threatened us, but that this war could easily be justified by his mass destruction of his own people, I find this chaotic loss of evidence [of mass graves near Basra] particularly sad"
Bunnies from Zarquon. See? You ARE wickedly witty. Tell the wife.
Go to this poll on Newsweek Magazine and ring bell people.
I tried of slanted Newsweek polls.
HERE
Tommy was on Diane Rehm show on Friday and said he talked to so so many GI's who just know we're by-gosh doing the right thing in Eye-raq.
Apparently winning the Pulitzer causes short term memory loss. Weren't we recently told following an outbreak of truthfulness that GI's criticizing Smirk, Rummy and Co. would be disciplined?
What a fucking dumbass.
Hmmm, "women friendly". Like being raped on the streets of Baghdad or whipped by the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan? Someone please send Tommy to the glue factory.
By God, that is rather umm... contradictory, Tom. I'm a big fan, but dude, get your head screwed on straight.
I disagree, Cheryl, about McCain. I think he's telling the truth, and it's hard to digest. I am afraid a draft could be necessary. I do not want it to be, but wishing won't make the situation go away.
If not for Bush stealing the primary, I would have voted Republican in 2000.
What a pantload.
Is that the same Thomas Friedman who wrote: "...the US wants the best of all worlds" (...) "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein, a return to the days when Saddam's iron fist held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia." (NYT, july 7, 1991)?
As for "women-friendly" government, let's ask an Iraqi woman:
Females can no longer leave their homes alone. Each time I go out, E. and either a father, uncle or cousin has to accompany me. It feels like we’ve gone back 50 years ever since the beginning of the occupation. A woman, or girl, out alone, risks anything from insults to abduction. An outing has to be arranged at least an hour beforehand. I state that I need to buy something or have to visit someone. Two males have to be procured (preferably large) and 'safety arrangements' must be made in this total state of lawlessness. And always the question: "But do you have to go out and buy it? Can't I get it for you?" No you can't, because the kilo of eggplant I absolutely have to select with my own hands is just an excuse to see the light of day and walk down a street. The situation is incredibly frustrating to females who work or go to college.
"I am afraid a draft could be necessary. I do not want it to be, but wishing won't make the situation go away."
I take it, Adam 4-2-4, that you're not old enough to remember Vietnam and the draft. If Chimpy's presidential popularity is slipping now, just imagine how it would be if they started pressing unwilling young men and women into the service of an occupation they oppose. Do we want our sons and daughters, nieces and nephews dragged into this thing against their will? Drafted to die for a cause they don't believe in? Trust me, we've been through this - we don't want to go there again.
It's amazing to me that people can make such unthinking, unfeeling comments about another person's life. A draft to provide troops for Bush's highly questionable war? A tragedy of epic proportions. There will be massive protests, and Canada's population will balloon.
I think we should stop a) expecting Tom Friedman to be consistent (the above reader who reads him for glimpses information, not pattern, is correct) b) fighting among ourselves. I mean, McCain is telling the White House and his party leadership to "trust the American people" (Where have I heard that phrase before?) and lay out the mess we're in. He seems to think that the American people will chip in the manpower and money to do the right thing. Me? I think that's a fantasy. But it's the way the government is supposed to be run, not the way the White House cabal is running it now.
...
The evil forces of Zarquon lose every time. Go Bunnies!
Who just carved that "Z" in Friedman's forehead!
All the answers I need, I received straight from the horses mouthes at the PNAC website.
Interesting how so many people in the SCLM still refuse to 'connect the dots' on any of these CCCP people's reasoning.
MYOB'
.
"it was to save the poor little bunnies from the invading forces from Zarquon."
I weep for those poor little bunnies.
There isn't a being more sure of their importance than a New York Times columnist. They are printed in the Times and are Wise. Making an idiot of yourselves in The Times means never having to consider that you are being an idiot. If he was an intern and, let's say it for once, black, he would have been fired a long time ago.
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