We're in trouble in Iraq
Really? Oh, Im so glad he told me, else I wouldnt have been able to figure that one out.

And he still manages to get in a dig at Kerry for not having a solution. Great. Just great.

I have an easy solution to at least one problem: Bring back Ehrenreich.

What was really annoying about the column was the tone that implied that we really didn't know we were in trouble in Iraq until Friedman let us know.

Good ole Tom. It's always so easy to say we need to change the mideast by imposing our will upon them (which Tom thinks is a noble and just cause) when it's other peoples' kids doing all the fighting and dying for it. If he thinks this is the right thing to do, then why doesn't he volunteer to go fight for it, and the same goes for all those chickenhawks who feel the same way.

Does Friedman have any idea how much credibility he has lost by advocating the war in the first place? For a guy that has visited the middle east so often he should have known EXACTLY how this all would play out. Yet he was totally wrong.

Further how is Kerry playing politics by telling us about his plan to win Iraq? Start with a summit, and fresh credibility. Sensible, concise. clear. No politics. Is it politics to recognize that the rest of the world and the majority of Iraqis despise our current administration and its surrogates, and that this gap in soft power is seriously undermining our efforts? Where was Freidman these last couple of months? Obviously not in Iraq or else how could he have failed to file a report like this.

Give it up Friedman. Take the log out of your own eye before you try to remove the speck in the eyes of others.

Now, if you want to pretend that "democracy" was ever a goal in Iraq you need to be able to adress this report, from another journalist who has actually been in Iraq recently. It's sad when NYT Op-ed's don't even pass the laugh test.

Let me get this straight. We are one month away from a presidential election. The incumbent lied and deceived the country into invading Iraq. The incumbent has been incompetent in prosecuting the war and managing the occupation (though I would argue that there was no "right way" to do a bad thing). The incumbent insists that everything he has done has been right, and that he is going to keep doing things the same way.

And on the eve of the election, we are supposed to take "politics" out of the discussion?

Friedman is arguing the Republican position: no matter that the war was a bad idea to begin with, no matter that it is going bad, any challenge to the ruling party and incumbent president is somehow out of line.

Friedman can go to hell.

Tom, go write a few more shitty books. Nobody is missing your writing "prowess". We'll get by some how with Herbert and Krugman.

When you say we're in trouble in Iraq, what do you mean by we vacationing thumb-sucking couch boy?

I love the smell of a good mob.

I forgot my pitchfork.

"We have to immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do not, we'll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured America, at war with itself and isolated from the world."

Wow. Such insight.

The Times Op-Ed page is so freaking strange. They're all clean stylists (although Herbert is a little dull). But Dowd, Friedman, and Brooks are persistently vapid.

I hate Safire, but at least I can acknowledge that what he's saying is in some ways interesting. Judging from the frothing rage that Krugman generates on the Right, I'd say he has a similar effect. But MoDo, Tommy and Dave persist in superficial, fatuous bullshit.

I'm constantly tempted to write the Op-Ed editor and offer to write inane crap for a third the price of one of them.

Glib. Did you ever see Friedman on Charlie Rose?

I'll tell you what I'd like to see, Tom at the table with Charlie and Robert Fisk of the Independent. Fisk would pulverize Friedman.

I'm obviously in the minority here, but I think Friedman is an important opinion maker and I think his work, particularly From Beirut to Jerusalem, had it been read by the ditto heads in the Administration, might have predicted what happened in Iraq.

With all his caveats and qualifications, the salient point to observe is that he essentially endorses Kerry for President by saying the Bush folks can't do the job. He also makes a point that I hope Kerry will drill home, namely that the lack of accountability (i.e. firings) of people who so obviously failed their job (rummy, wolfie, the "onward christian soldier" general known only to those inside beltway types, etc..) is an embarrassment. Kerry smoked Bush without even touching on Abu Ghraib or the poor view the rest of the world has of us.

I do think Friedman should be ashamed that he passed on writing during 90 percent of the campaign only to swoop in for the final 10 percent and say ...huh ..that Bush he really f*ed it up.

I'm obviously in the minority here, but I think Friedman is an important opinion maker and I think his work, particularly From Beirut to Jerusalem, had it been read by the ditto heads in the Administration, might have predicted what happened in Iraq.

With all his caveats and qualifications, the salient point to observe is that he essentially endorses Kerry for President by saying the Bush folks can't do the job. He also makes a point that I hope Kerry will drill home, namely that the lack of accountability (i.e. firings) of people who so obviously failed their job (rummy, wolfie, the "onward christian soldier" general known only to those inside beltway types, etc..) is an embarrassment. Kerry smoked Bush without even touching on Abu Ghraib or the poor view the rest of the world has of us.

I do think Friedman should be ashamed that he passed on writing during 90 percent of the campaign only to swoop in for the final 10 percent and say ...huh ..that Bush he really f*ed it up.

I'm obviously in the minority here, but I think Friedman is an important opinion maker and I think his work, particularly From Beirut to Jerusalem, had it been read by the ditto heads in the Administration, might have predicted what happened in Iraq.

With all his caveats and qualifications, the salient point to observe is that he essentially endorses Kerry for President by saying the Bush folks can't do the job. He also makes a point that I hope Kerry will drill home, namely that the lack of accountability (i.e. firings) of people who so obviously failed their job (rummy, wolfie, the "onward christian soldier" general known only to those inside beltway types, etc..) is an embarrassment. Kerry smoked Bush without even touching on Abu Ghraib or the poor view the rest of the world has of us.

I do think Friedman should be ashamed that he passed on writing during 90 percent of the campaign only to swoop in for the final 10 percent and say ...huh ..that Bush he really f*ed it up.

...the "onward christian soldier" general known only to those inside beltway types...

His name is General Boykin.