Unlike Gates, I havent heard a single word come out of Patreaus’s mouth that disagrees with the administration’s official line. If patraeus says something that doesnt jive with the pre-aranged BS the white haus has been shoveling, then I’ll start thinking hes something more than a parrot/puppet..

Well la-di-da. Friedman should consider apologizing to all the people who have lost loved ones in this debacle, as should everyone who cheerleaded us into it on such thin evidence. Hey Tom, you were wrong. Deal with it.

Give him a chance to do what? Kill more innocent people who were NOT inolved in 9-11 and did not have any means of destroying the United States (unlike Israel which actually maintains an offensive nuclear arsenal)?
Give Patraeus a chance to spread a wider war for the benefit of Israel (which just received an additional $30 BILLION in aid from the United States thanks to Steny Hoyer) while more American soldiers die for ZERO gain to themselves and their country?

he has no friends in iraq, and hasn’t spent any significant amount of time on the ground of any arab country.

Darla,

TF has spent lots of time in the ME and know a bit about it. While I may not agree with him on many things, you’re dead wrong about him.

Btw, John Burns [the NYT's top Iraq reporter] has spent a heck of alot of time in Iraq. The following link is an interview of JB by a conservative lawyer/show host. Get past who is asking the questions and read the answers w/an open mind.

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/talkradio/transcripts/Transcript.aspx?ContentGuid=5bdb3520-d829-4fdb-a2bc-6611d80faba4

Clearly Iraq is a mixed bag but there is reason for some hope.

The liberal German mag Der Spiegel is on the same page.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-499154,00.html

I could post a dozen other links from left leaning media that all say the something similar. As much as many don’t want to accept it for partisan [and BDS] reasons, the Petraeus COIN stategy is working.

Give the good General Petraeus a chance instead of bashing him.

Yes Paul Bremmer was the biggest idiot that ever could have been in charge of the interim govt.

Things would have been better had Jay Garner been left in charge at that time, but he was telling Rumsfeld that his plans were not realistic….so he had to go.

In the end, Iraq may still have descended into the state it is now. However, a little competence early would have gone a long way to maintaining societal infrastructures.

He never deals seriously with the darkside of globalization (i.e. dependence on essentially slavery and dependence on repressive governments). he just thinks that Democracies will magically pop up.

…Bush-Cheney-style…

“And I don’t apologize for that. I’m not going to apologize for thinking that if we could find a way to collaborate with people there to build a different future in the heart of that world, which is afflicted by so many pathologies, that that wouldn’t be a really good thing.”

What Friedman fails to recognize (or mention) is that adding anymore “pathologies” to that region could not help but make things worse, especially with the wingnuts in the Bush administration, being so pathological (or should I say psychopathological), just afflicting that region with one more pathology.

Too few troops.
CPA.
Paul Bremer.
Canning all the Baathists, leaving millions unemployed, driving them into the arms of the insurgents.
Wingnut economic “nation building” schemes: flat tax, privatization, denial of government services, etc.

The “pathology” of the wingnuts merged into a lethal brew once this pathology mixed with all the pathologies in that region…and our soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens are paying for this wingnut pathology.

Oh, and Friedman is probably still a supporter of Ahmad Chalabi, making them two pathological liars in a pod, both of whom thought removing Saddam Hussein would be a cakewalk and the best thing for that region and it’s citizens.

Strange, back in mid-2002, I was certain that the “pathological” Bush administration was going to attack Iraq as soon as they could, just as I was certain that attacking Iraq would turn out the way it has…and I’m not even a “genius” like Friedman.

cut the crap, sh*t-for-brains!

“I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie.

…

We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big state right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.

…

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?”

You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow?

Well, Suck. On. This.

Okay.

That Charlie was what this war was about. We could’ve hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.”

All three of them need to move to Israel if they want to represent that country.

Comment by Muckraker — August 17, 2007 @ 4:11 pm

I totally disagree. If no-one is allowed to admit mistakes without being accused of “flip-flopping” (I’m so sick of that expression!) then we will pay big time down the road. A real man has the strength to admit when he’s wrong and own up to it!

Mindlessly sticking by every past thought or action to avoid appearing weak is….WEAK! Pride comes before a fall and all that.