Tommy ‘Suck on This‘ Friedman.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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After reading that, I need a pick me up. Oh, here it is.
Because its late, is Friedman’s article some sort of Republican “wet dream”.
OMG, that guy is the all time wanker’s wanker!
Seriously, I could not even get all the way through that piece of horse**.
Wait a minute, that’s not fair! Horses are lovely animals, and horse** is biodegradable, and very useful as fertilizer. Friedman’s crap doesn’t do anything but stink up the planet for eternity – and his condescending, paternalistic orientalist diarrhetic spewings stink up the place worse than just about anything.
No mention of 6 months? How are we supposed to believe it’s an actual Friedman piece?
Clearly not a Bush piece. Too many complete sentences.
By the way, did I ever tell you about the time I argued Friedman to a standstill in my sleeP/
OK, stop me if you’ve heard this one. A couple of years ago I was home sick one day (a VERY rare occurrance, FWITW – I’d almost always rather suffer at work than give up a day off being sick at home!), and fell asleep in front of the TV. I dreamed I was in some sort of academic building and overheard some idiot speaking to a group of people and saying to most absurdly ignorant and illogical things about the Middle East. I went over and stood in the crowd for a few minutes, and then started countering with facts every piece of ignorant, arrogant nonsense he was spouting. After a while I began to come out of my sleep, and slowly realized, without surprise, that I had been arguing with that self-satisfied orientalist wanker Tom Friedman, who was making an appearance on Oprah. It’s really, REALLY too bad I was not actually there. It would have been a great opportunity to challenge the thinking of a whole lot of Americans who think whatever they hear on Oprah must be true!
A bit off topic here, but about odd dreams featuring public wackoffs, I had Dick Cheney visit me and as much as I tried politely to get him to leave he kept pushing an artist or some kind of art on me. I couldn’t understand him anyway. Can you imagine, Cheney peddling art! Friedman is as usual peddling bull. ‘No matter what, somehow, some way, the Iraq ‘project’ was nonetheless a brilliant idea, if the Iraqis hadn’t screwed up everything.’
“I had Dick Cheney visit me and as much as I tried politely to get him to leave he kept pushing an artist or some kind of art on me. I couldn’t understand him anyway. Can you imagine, Cheney peddling art! Friedman is as usual peddling bull.”
Makes perfect sense to me. They’re both BULLSHIT ARTISTS.
A financial 9/11? Clearly written by Rudy and his people. I stopped reading when he said something about the Iraqis pulling themselves bank from the brink of self-destruction. Never mind that we caused that chaos.
Reads to me like some sort of begging letter. We bailed you (Iraqis) out – Pleeeaaassse bail us out now. Ok Ok we brought this financial 9/11 on ourselves – but you guys have been making problems for yourselves as well. Can we have our oil now please?
Oh and the 600,000 dead and 2 million refugees well, you don’t have to thank us we’ll just wank away and thank ourselves. Oh and remember everything is your fault. Think of yourself as someone who wanted a house and got taken to the cleaner. Just give more and blame yourself.
holy shit.
dumb as a bag of hammers.
I like tommy’s George Bush imitation.
“I originally launched this war in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”
No, that was a lie.
I was wrong.
No Tommy, Bush was a liar, and you were stupid enough to believe him.
“But it quickly became apparent that Al Qaeda and its allies in Iraq were determined to make America fail in any attempt to build a decent Iraq and tilt the Middle East toward a more democratic track, no matter how many Iraqis had to be killed in the process.”
More lies.
“This was not the war we came for, but it was the one we found.”
Oh, so now you’re channeling Conan the Barbarian? dipshit.
Jeebus. Did Tom Friedman just write a scolding letter to the country that we bombed the fuck out of and are now currently occupying? A country where the majority of the people are ready to throw us out and even their own goddamn government is asking us to leave? A country where, apparently, our government begged their government to let our military stay for one more year beyond when their government wanted our troops out (2011 instead of 2010) because it would make John McCain look like an idiot if their government was demanding we leave on the same timetable that his opponent was proposing?
Does Friedman not realize how much we owe the Iraqis? Sure we got rid of a horrible, brutal dictator. But it’s been replaced by brutal mob rule in some areas, factional warfare in others, and political instability across the entire country. Women’s rights in Iraq have been set back to a previous generation, and while it might make Friedman feel good that we replaced a dictator who wrongly imprisoned and tortured and killed his people, the fact that we replaced him with a chaos that accomplishes the SAME FUCKING THING without the benefit of stability doesn’t sound like anything to be proud of.
Tom Friedman can suck on this – he’s an accessory to mass murder. Someday, the Iraqis are going to come a-callin’. They’re going to want their pound of flesh. If we’re lucky, we’ll get away with giving them money for their misery – a massive war reparations package. I hope Tom Friedman is around to see it – though I imagine he’ll be shocked at how ungrateful the Iraqis are for the freedom we brought them.
Son of a bitch. It’s only 9am and I already need a drink.
Nonynony, I absolutely agree with you in principle, but in the interest of accuracy, I gotta quibble with a few details.
“A country where the majority of the people are ready to throw us out and even their own goddamn government is asking us to leave?“
It’s not “their own government”. While arguably the Parliament can be said to have been elected by the people – sort of – Maliki and his government were selected by the Bush regime and imposed on the Iraqi Parliament and people. If you will recall, Ja`fari was chosen as PM by the Parliament, George Bush nixed the choice very openly, then sent Condi Rice and Jack Straw to “help” the Iraqi Parliament choose the “right” PM. After that, the empire was VERY helpful in assisting Maliki in finding just the “right” cabinet.
“the same timetable that his opponent was proposing?“
Obama has NEVER proposed a timetable for a complete withdrawal. What he HAS proposed is a timetable for a reconfiguration of the occupation with the goal of reducing the occupation force to 1/2-1/3 of the maximum force during The Surge(TM). He made that clear very early in the primary, and has not changed it significantly since then, but most people choose not to notice anything beyond the nice sound bytes and typical politician’s verbal sleight of hand. (And for the record, Hillary’s plan was virtually identical to Obama’s.)
“Sure we got rid of a horrible, brutal dictator. But it’s been replaced by brutal mob rule in some areas, factional warfare in others, and political instability across the entire country.“
And don’t forget what is by far the most destructive and deadly element in Iraq since 2003 – the United States occupation regime, the United States military, and their agents and collaborators.
“Women’s rights in Iraq have been set back to a previous generation…
To which generation are you referring? I ask because women’s rights in Iraq have been set back not one generation, not two generations, and not even three generations. they have been set back at least a couple of centuries, and probably more. Many people believe that it was with the Ba`th regime that Iraqi women began to have rights and freedoms, but that is definitely not true. Iraqi women have been part of public political and professional life since before Iraq became a state, and the situation for women continued to improve over the decades, although they did begin to deteriorate somewhat after 1991. However, since 2003 life for women in Iraq has become as bad as any place in the world.
“and while it might make Friedman feel good that we replaced a dictator who wrongly imprisoned and tortured and killed his people, the fact that we replaced him with a chaos that accomplishes the SAME FUCKING THING…“
Saddam did not have enough prisons to hold all the prisoners/detainees the United States is holding right now, and by all reports the Iraqi make-believe government is holding slightly more than the U.S. is holding. The total political prisoners/detainees in Iraq right now is estimated at around 40,000-50,000.
And Saddam usually did not make the kinds of huge, arbitrary sweeps in which he just grabbed up everyone in the vicinity, held them indefinitely without charge, and tortured them for no apparent reason except blind, racist sadism. Hard to believe, but true.
This has been obvious for a decade or more.
Why even read him?
AG
You give Friedman FAR too much credit – FAAAAAAR to much.
That’s giving him “credit”!!!???
HELL no.
My son came home from middle school one day, looked at me and said “Dad, did you ever notice that nobody likes the popular kids?” I knew right then that he was going to do just fine in the world, and I was right.
Did you ever notice that the Intelligence services aren’t really very smart?
Yup.
Same idea.
Neither is Friedman.
He is clever, and he has position. (NY Times position.)
Fools pay attention to him. The one necessity for an intel media asset. That and the ability to take orders and/or an overreaching greed and/or an overarching political belief that fits in with whatever the intel people think that they believe and/or some personal faults that can be used as blackmail.
Preferably all of the above.
That’s “credit”?
Not in my book it’s not.
AG
So, does that mean that Iraq isn’t
seen as profitablea safety concern anymore?Wow.
Douchebaggery at its finest.
I thought the Surge worked and the war is over!!! Horray This is what the GOP. McCain and the Corporate media have told Americans. I can not wait for the doubling down in Afghanistan that should be fun too. We can spend the next 2 years talking about how we are “winning” Afghanistan because of the additional troops. Awesome.
Tommy ‘The World is Flat and So is My Head’ Friedman.