Friedman is an idiot and always has been. If he wasn’t married to billions, everyone would ignore him. We live in a society that so worships wealth we’d kiss a monkey’s ass to be seen with it.

Says one person: “However, I did like FriedmanÂ’s special on Addicted to Oil that was on the Discovery Channel.”

Oh, did you? Isn’t it obvious that the recent, carefully orchestrated media chorus blaming Americans for using too much oil very conveniently shifts the blame for recent skyrocketing oil prices away from Israel, where it clearly belongs, onto Amerians, for the sin of driving too much?

Oil reserves the world over are at an all-time HIGH. The main reason for the present spike in oil prices is

(1) the US war in Iraq, embarked on completely for Israeli interests and against our own;

(2) Israel’s expansion of the war to a mass murder of Lebanon that looks very much like a prelude to a war—possibly a nuclear attack—against Iran.

All of this is completely CONTRARY TO US INTERESTS and is ONLY FOR ISRAEL’S RIGHT-WING AGENDA.

Of course, the spiking oil prices won’t hurt Israel. They quietly pushed through Congress a bill for billions in extra “aid”—to help dear little Israel cope with the extra expenses.

I’m surprised Friedman is jumping on board the anti-war bandwagon. God knows how many times he’s been on Charlie Rose’s program stating how Iraq will go this way or that way only to end up being wrong. CNN’s Lou Dobbs actually took Friedman to task when Friedman misquoted Dobbs on a taping of CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer in reference to illegal immigration. However, I did like Friedman’s special on Addicted to Oil that was on the Discovery Channel.

To Friedman’s credit, he’s had broad appeal across party lines in America’s post 9/11 divisive political climate. But in my mind, he’s always been more of a politician than a journalist - which would explain his about face on Iraq these days.

Given Friedman’s supposed expertise on the Middle East, he spent a lot of time defending the Bush administration’s ignorant policies. So at this point, he has no credibility whatsoever for me.

Comment #16723 says it like it is. I fully agree.

Check out David Sirota on Tom Friedman:

Billionaire Scion Tom Friedman
By David Sirota

“IÂ’ve documented repeatedly how New York Times columnist Tom Friedman parrots the propaganda of Big Money, using his column to legitimize some of the worst, most working-class-persecuting policies this country has seen in the last century ... “

http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/07/30/billionaire-scion-tom-friedman/

and

CAUGHT ON TAPE: Tom Friedman’s Truly Shocking Admission
By David Sirota

“New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is considered by the Washington, D.C. media and political establishment to be the leading authority on trade policy. Friedman has aggressively pushed corporate-written ‘free’ trade deals, devoting column after column after column shilling for these deals - and spending almost no time actually exploring how these deals undermine wages, job security, environmental standards and workplace rights both in America and abroad. Now, in a little-noticed interview, Friedman actually went on record admitting he advocates for specific trade deals without knowing anything about what’s in the trade deals he is writing about.”

Distributed to Sirota’s email list, July 24, 2006

OF COURSE IT’S A CIVIL WAR, YOU SILLY MAN

Of course we all know the expression “When they stand up, we’ll stand down.”
On or around Valentine’s Day 2007 the Shia will have sufficient forces under arms to feel confident that they can dominate, decimate and destroy the Sunnis.
This being so, they will ask/tell/demand American forces to withdraw in order that they may proceed to dominate, decimate and destroy the Sunnis.
Given that they will, the Shia, pop the question to Mr Rumsfeld, et al, it begs this question.
“Donald, you love irony and sarcasm, what exactly are you going to respond when the Islamo-radicals ask you to withdraw so that they can slaughter the secular Sunnis?”
Perhaps they’ll phrase it this way. Thanks for the guns and uniforms. And by the way, yes, this is a civil war you silly, silly man, you friend of Zion. Now leave.
Oh irony, if you don’t move to protect and empower the suiciders and IEDers, the very forces you came to disempower, then Iran (i.e. the Shia) will gain regional power and become an abutter to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“When they stand up, peace, democracy and stability are going down” is staring the world in the face.
Valentine’s Day it will truly be.

Friedman is phony and makes his living by acting as equivalent political and economic hit man described by Anthony Perkins in his book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.”

He fronted for the Bush administration in pushing for the war. He fronted for free trade agremments without having a clue what is in those agreements. His biggest job is to spread ideas that reflect corporate political and economic interests. It is to be expected; after all, he is member of the wealthy class.

Spinoza’s dang right:

“And how many tens of thousands have died?  War makers need to be executed.”

Friedman has now joined PNAC stalwart Francis Fukuyama in distancing himself from the Iraq disaster without acknowledging their complicity in creating the mess.  Both pieces are artfully written, and on first read Fukuyama’s even appeared to be an apologia.  On second read, it clearly was not.  Like Friedman’s column, it was much closer to “<yawn>...been there, done that…so what’s next?”  Not a hint of the role each played in ending thousands of lives, ruining the lives of hundreds of thousand of survivors, squandering billions of dollars, and advancing America’s well-desrved reputation as an amoral, imperialist global thug.

And in the Senate we have Hillary Clinton asking the questions now that she was afraid to ask three years ago.

What a pathetic bunch.

Friedman seems to describe here his own loss of credibility.  Until he takes responsibility for the influential role he played in making this war (and other Bush, Inc. imperialist escapades) possible, then he is simply a tool of those he now critizes.  Even now, he sees only the failed outcome of our military aggression and remains blind to the flawed assumptions which buoyed his support of the war for so long.  Perhaps the time has come for Friedman to follow the logical trail of his advocacy for US-mediated free trade toward its inevitable manifestation, Empire.  How much longer can he hold this dissociation?  I wish you luck, sir.  The common people of the world could sure use your help.

And how many tens of thousands have died?  War makers need to be executed.

Too little, too late!  I guess the big question is why this ‘astute’ observer of world events didn’t ‘get it’ in 2002-3 like many liberals did. Why didn’t he see the “Mohammed Ata meeting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague”, the aluminum tubes, etc were totally planted stories, why he didn’t question that with inspectors on the ground in Iraq in the fall of 2002-early 2003 the US ‘had’ to go to war and why he didn’t read UNSCOM’s reports of no WMD programs when they left Iraq in Decemeber, 1998 and how in 4 short years they could become the threat of a ‘mushroom cloud’ as Bush put it.  This is pretty simple connect the dots/common sense stuff…...so why the massive group think to war?  Sorry, but I don’t forgive any of them.

When I read Friedman’s columns I always think he is trying to turn in a paper that meets the expectations of whatever “professor” gave him the assignment.

He’s brilliant ... and he can distill complex ideas into simple enough concepts for most of us to grasp ... it’s just that there doesn’t seem to be the depth of rational creativity or original reasoning emanating from his mind that would raise his writing to another level. But that’s my opinion ... and he’s still fairly young as these things go.

Like in his book, THE WORLD IS FLAT ... I think he misses the point ... the world isn’t becoming leveled out ... that’s the wrong visual image/concept ... it is incredibly more useful to think of the world as a crystal lattice with interconnected nodes becoming denser and denser ... there is nothing straight-line about it ... but the title works ... well, until I thought about it.

But I digress. Us old farts do that.

His “elastic deadlines” became a source of humor for me. It didn’t take too long to stop taking him seriously on Iraq ... but he must have still been getting good grades from his “professor”, so his line of reasoning continued.

Maybe he realized he reached the level of a bad Jeopardy joke, like,  A: “We’ll know in another six months to a year.” Q: “What did Tom Friedman write about the war in Iraq this time?” So he’s “fessed up” to reality.

I have to hand it to him, though. I believe he went to Damascus recently ... and I have a lot of respect for him as a reporter.

tom’s trying to cover his well-fed posterior by making it seem that poor execution is to blame [e.g. ‘having too few u.s. troops’]

tom’s delighted that tubby w did what tom wanted him to do by taking us into iraq—now that chaos reigns, tom’s even more delighted because it fits his thinking that arabs are nutters, but he can’t say that in print

There is absolutely nothing about this fiasco that was not foreseeable by anyone with even a passing understanding of the Middle East, particularly given the fact that we obviously had a grossly incompetent, willfully ignorant, and just plain malicious President in office set to run the whole thing into the ground.

There is absolutely no excuse for Friedman’s EVER having supported this despicable enterprise, and if there were any justice in this world, his career as a pundit would have been INCINERATED by this episode.

But of course, the Israel industry still needs plenty of fake “liberals” and fake “intellectuals” to shill for them on TV, so we’ll NEVER be rid of him.