Zed!
Hi, BT.
Obviously we should just exterminate the Arab world with nuclear weapons and call it a day. /s

He must be writing a new Book of Stupid.

Al Qaeda’s weapon of choice was suicide.

As in “I’ll blow myself to bits any day of the week. Why would I be scared of waterboarding?”

With his wife’s investment now worthless he prolly needs the bucks to maintain his Maryland McMansion.

Aw… Leave little Tommy alooone… He’s all upset because the little woman’s assets just went pfffft. Poor thing.

The waterboard is flat, quoth the moustache of wisdom.

That’s what I thought, too.

Like there’s a shortage of stupid out there and he wants to corner the market, get in on the ground floor before the price of stupid runs up…

LOL

I wonder how long it will take for FU to trade in this broke wife for a new model.

Ouch. Cold but prolly true.

can I go off topic to gag?

just talking to my brother and sister in law in PA. We’re very similar politically. I thought. They’re ecstatic. I just learned for the 1st time they voted for Spectre and love how he “votes his conscience.” Boy, ya think ya know people…………

cough. cough. gag.

If nothing else Flathead has earned(?) a place in history with the Friedman Unit.

Looks like you got some long sessions of splainin’ the real world to those folks comin’.

intelligence, is that Al Qaeda is primarily focused on defeating America in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world — particularly in Iraq.

Gee if I was on the lam from the law I would love to have them looking for me in the catskills since I live by the rockies.

I’m sure Tommy would be happy if we went back to a sensible tax rate. Say…the rate we had when Ike was president.

This dude really does live in a parallel universe, doesn’t he?

Now *that* was a down-right enjoyable article. *G* Thankee!

Friedman is, of course, a fool.

Why pay attention to this fool?

I was hoping and expecting that someone hear at the lake would comment on Friedman article.

Al Qaeda is a unique enemy only in that the only way it presents an existential threat is by causing us to abandon our own principles. Friedman has been a prime cheerleader for exactly that.

The whole “tear the country apart” meme was rolled out incessantly with Bush v Gore in 2000. Funny how it is claimed that application of the established legal processes like following the Constitution’s written procedure for contested elections, carrying out our treaty obligations or prosecution of the country’s laws (whether FISA before PAA; or torture now) will always lead to the country tearing apart, but not following those procedures and laws won’t.

Well, shit, back to the cesspool. At least there’s nothin’ goin’ on and I get to read more of Harvey’s The Limits to Capital.

We could deter the Russians because they loved their children more than they hated us; they did not want to die.

How old is this assclown with his rosy rear view, anyway? 55 years upon this earth and he writes this sort of unadulterated sentimentalist claptrap.
If the Soviets thought they could have solved the capitalist problem with tactical nukes, they would have, and children be damned – just like the Americans.
However, cynical pragmatism ruled the day, and so began 5 decades of mutually guileful ideological posturing for the benefit of the deluded, war by proxy using client states and amicable dictators, and economic one-upmanship that enriched arms merchants and nurtured military-industrial complexes.

What a deeply, deeply ridiculous man, indeed.

Well said.

The World Thomas’s Head is Flat

You’re welcome! It gave me a little frisson of schadenfreude.

Friedman is simply a hypocrite spreading hypocrisy for fellow hypocrites to cite as ‘informed justification’. So long as it serves the hypocritical few, this man has something to say. You will know them by their choices. They reserve for themselves what they condemn in others. They choose for others what they do not choose for themselves. They are hypocrites. This is not a judgment. It is an observation of fact. This especially applies to chauvinistic national exceptionalists defending the war crime of torture. The real question is why the ‘newspaper of record’ accords a platform to a man who has consistently supported every misguided, ungracious, and tragic hypocritical policy of the last twenty?

My oxdown diary of Matt Taibbi savaging Friedman [nypress]:

Excerpt:

Taibbi then eviscerates Friedman’s method of social science research consisting of flying around the world and talking about what he sees out of his hotel room window. At the end he explains the real world consequences of printing such foolishness:

To review quickly, the “Long Bomb” Iraq war plan Friedman supported as a means of transforming the Middle East blew up in his and everyone else’s face; the “Electronic Herd” of highly volatile international capital markets he once touted as an economic cure-all not only didn’t pan out, but led the world into a terrifying chasm of seemingly irreversible economic catastrophe; his beloved “Golden Straitjacket” of American-style global development (forced on the world by the “hidden fist” of American military power) turned out to be the vehicle for the very energy/ecological crisis Friedman himself warns about in his new book; and, most humorously, the “Flat World” consumer economics Friedman marveled at so voluminously turned out to be grounded in such total unreality that even his wife’s once-mighty shopping mall empire, General Growth Properties, has lost 99 percent of its value in this year alone.

So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts.

Brooks, Broder, Friedman and so many, many others. What does it say about the mainstream media that these are supposed to be their “deep” thinkers? It isn’t that everything they say is wrong that is so irritating. It is that it is so stupidly wrong. And yet year in year out, there they are and remain in their high profile, well paid gigs.

The question is not whether they represent legitimate viewpoints. They don’t. Stupidity does not count as one. Rather it is why do major media organizations find it in their interests to keep them on. I can only think that it is because this is the spin they want the rubes to hear.

“The Al Qaeda operatives hated us more than they loved their own children. They glorified martyrdom and left families behind.”

Shorter TF: So we had to go medieval on their ass.

Meanwhile Tom Freidman, disguised as a toilet bowl, was busy overflowing little nuggets.

I can only think that it is because this is the spin they want the rubes to hear.

Precisely. When introduced into the discourse through propaganda spearpoints, disseminated via ‘respectable’ opinion makers and parroted sufficiently, the most outrageous prevarications become ‘conventional wisdom’ and accepted by the incurious as incontrovertible fact.

As we have all seen, it is very difficult to dislodge this sort of misinformation once it takes root…Chauvinism in its original form.

9/11 was orchestated out of Tel Aviv as a pretext for getting the US to fight a proxy war for Israel in Iraq. The towers and Building 7 were brought down by thermite planted by agents of the Mossad.

There wasn’t another 9/11 since because attacking the US as second time is not in Israel’s interest.

He’s a no concern for human decency troll.

Awwwww c’mon guys, Tom’s just lookin’ on the bright side. Similarly there would be no State of Israel if it wasn’t for the Holocaust; see, every dark cloud has a silver lining.

NYT: find foot, Aim, Fire

uh

But the best line in the column, the one that makes it TOTALLY pointless, unlike his head, is

“They do not care whether we torture or not”

If Al Qaeda doesn’t care if we torture, that means that it’s NOT an effective deterrent. It means that we’re degrading ourselves for no purpose at all. Problem is, they DO care. They want us to sink to that level, and we played right into their hands.

“during WWII, we followed the Geneva Conventions when we captured Germans”

http://www.rense.com/general46/germ.htm

Some back away, others run….but no one escapes.

;>)

There is one person might actually gain from Friedman’s witless drivel.

Douglas Feith can thank Tom Friedman for taking his place as “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the Earth”.

Feith should send him a card or something.

I was trying to respond the the comment after yours and now I tried to delete it incompetently

Flypaper: sacrifice the lives of between 250,000 and a million Iraqis by turning their country into an open-air shooting gallery, plunder an ancient culture and the treasures that reside in the cradle of civilization, and flush the hard-fought and very tenuous goodwill of some other nations in the region… so as to protect the Homeland™ from… nothing.

I like it, Tom. Medal of Freedumb™ coming right up.

Aw, here and I thought the Flock of Seagulls hairdo belonged to Rep. “Crazy Ass” McCotter…

Isn’t that cute…a drive-by conspiracy troll.

I don’t know about you,but I have never gotten a call from anyone that I know,asking me what I thought about Mr.Freidmans latest thoughts.I do remember awhile back he was being interviewed by Amy Goodman,and she was asking him some very pointed questions.

The interview got to a point where she asked him something,and it hit a nerve,and he said”I don’t have to got through this”and he stopped the interview.So to me he is only,full of it loves to be full of it,and will continue to be full of it.

Friedman is tapping into the whole subtle racism meme. I recall that the same “They don’t look at human life the same way we do?” concept being applied by Conservatives in the Vietnam War. “They don’t value their children is very close to what is promoted by the Z*oni*t propagandists about Arabs [lots of pictures of kids in military style uniforms with guns, as if the same isn’t true in Israel, and- of course- no US child is ever allowed to handle a toy gun, much less a real one, are they].

When I was in my twenties I recall arguing with a guy a bit like Friedman about the devotion of Vietnamese to their kids. He claimed that there was no respect for human life “they just have another one, death rates are so high from disease and famines…they can’t afford to get attached to one child”. And his best evidence for all of this was when the Buddhist monks began to self immolate. “See, they think that life isn’t important…so we have to blow them away…it’s a war of attrition”.

That said, I’d hear the same statements from people opposed to the War…justifying why we couldn’t win. Having travelled the globe and lived with people in their villages and farms I knew that these ideas were ridiculous. Still, they persist, thanks to people like Friedman.

You’re a better soul than I…I wouldn’t even dignify that truthiness with a reply.
…
Rayne, I thought Thad was strictly ‘cue ball, side pocket’ when it came to hairdo’s.

;>)

Friedman is a fool that the corporate media would have us believe is a genius. OT but, when did Karl Rove or Harriet Meirs sit down with Conyers? Has it been schedule prior to 2012? A political system so corrupt and compromised by big money that any meaningful accountability or reform is a pipe dream.

The ANTHRAX ATTACKS were as terrifying to many as 9/11 (poison in your own mail box), and torture did nothing to prevent Rumsfeld, Cheney and their co-conspirators from attacking us then, or now:

Swine Flu Kills (press coverage of the torture Memos) & Coincidence Theorists Fall For It:

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5030

If the Anthrax strain and the Swine Flue strain both came from US Defense Department Laboratories, then what?

Can we get Rumsfeld in for questioning?

Friedman has and is the ” Extreme Neocons Nice Face to distract the gentiles while we steal them clean “

Look at just 3 key criminal issues that are being pushed aside while we get “this” nonsense or “that” Google book bad thing…anything to get the USA attention away from these:

a) Jane Herman putting her House Seat and political ambitions in play in exchange for some Justice Dept. manipulations , and that’s totally illegal.

b) Dianne Feinstein pushing Stimulus money , 25 billion, to benefit her husband Richard Blum’s business at CBRE , and that’s totally illegal.

c) Porter Goss as the head of the House “Office of Congressional Ethics ” when he had to resign from the CIA directorship in 24 hours when the Cunningham-Foggo corruption case was starting to open up, and his links are still in the D.C. safe for ” too corrupt but too much inside information ” !!! and that’s totally illegal, he should be the last person investigating elected officials, this is extortion of the worst kind….classic D.C.

all these real issues are pushed aside by all the TV and Cable Networks while we get the “nonsense”,and now we get Arlen Specter , who is going to demand from P.Obama to put Elena Kagan in the Supreme Court , Kagan is one extreme member of the Shas-Kach orthodox group in Israel , ex-lawyer of WilmerHale and partner there of the worst one: Jamie “the Wall” Gorelick , the ex-Justice Deputy A.G. which wrote the famous memo that made impossible for all the Criminal,Civil,Terror and Border-FBI units of the Justice Dpt. to talk to each other about the 19 terrorists of 9/11/2001, because they are the ones !!!! what a criminal shame this all is !!!

we must get U.S. Att. Patrick Fitzgerald inside the Justice Dpt. to investigate the whole Bush-Cheney -War and Deregulation – Administration.

hey pups,

am I the only tinfoil wearing paranoiac who thinks the Air Force One fiasco was due to some cheneybot serving to remind everyone of 9/11…now that the torture memos etc are coming to light? It really smells to high heaven to me. I saw no reason to keep a photo op on a “need to know” basis, unless the real objective was to scare the higher moral standard out of everybody.

It would also explain why Gibbs was so jittery about the fact that this was able to go down without anyone immediately close to the president knowing about it?

Am i paranoid?

Interesting how people like Friedman can be taken seriously for discussing fantasy scenarios to justify torture, but those of us who are convinced the Bush government was instrumental in purposefully having 9/11 happen are crackpots.

Which scenario is more plausible, the ticking time bomb that needs torture to save the world or the criminal government executing a false-flag operation for political gain?

Reminds me of the Golda Meir quote;

“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”

Friedman’s “ideas” are mostly a mish-mash of parroted BS and the shallow musings of an obviously dull mind.

I’d have to call that a trick question: neither scenario is plausible to me, certainly not on the basis of the offered evidence.

As for Friedman, the next six months are critical…oh, hell, why don’t I just start ignoring him now and avoid the rush?

Arlen Specter , who is going to demand from P.Obama to put Elena Kagan in the Supreme Court

He is in no position to demand anything from anybody, let alone from Obama.

emptywheel is upstairs at the top of the front page!
Politico: Still Stumbling Over Obvious Crimes to Cover a He-Said-She-Said Story

Read his article from a 1930s perspective and replace the word al quada with ” the Jews” then cry me your river.

Friedman is rich by marriage and has the time to come up with a new theory to justify his continuing support of Bush and the Clintons on Iraq, better to fight em over there than here if that’s where they want to fight. But he is copying, without attribution, one of Jerry Falwell’s proclamations that it better to fight the godless and fearless saudis and egyptians in Iraq than in NYC. Always note that Friedman never mentions the nationalties or the ages or the level of experience of the Qaeda rich kids from Egypt and Saudi Arabia that Friedman finds more threatening than Rommel.

Specter owes Obama- not the other way around. Without the dem lifeline, Specter would be looking at retirement.

Wow. It’s great that you have a grasp of this history.

While I grant you there are a lot of extremist theories (like the previously mentioned Israeli proxy war), there is plenty of evidence that a false operation from the government is possible. We can begin with the PNAC document saying the US needed a new Pearl Harbor to get on the proper war footing and season that with Operation Northwoods.

I’m not asking anyone to believe the Bush government purposefully committed 9/11. But it should be proper and reasonable to ask that question. And maybe have some people seriously examine the possibility, much as investigative reporters supposedly work (without stretching credibility with breathless “revelations”). But for some reason some conspiracies just get too big to accept and end up dismissed out of hand.

Yo dude did look at his muscle backing arlin up.

For those that believe the 9-11 lie ,don’t fly on an airplane for more than an hour cause jet fuel can melt the steel in the engine in less time than that.

Some friends used to call this testosterone poisoning. All of these men will really want to kill and torture to prove how tough they are. It’s not about protecting the US, they don’t want a “soft” solution. Remember when the Brits got caught in Iranian waters? They got them out with talking. No one died. But to folks like Tommy F that is humilating. The successful saving of lives didn’t count. They would rather the captured all die to send a message that you don’t mess with America’s manhood.
We know torture does work on people who would rather die than talk. What if another technique worked but wasn’t cruel?

“Tom, we have a gay terrorist who said he will reveal the location of the bomb if he can get a blowjob for Tom Friedman Jack Bauer says it is our only choice! Do you love America enough to Suck. On. This?”

I totally agree with you.

Heh. You must have missed the Cueball’s metaphor about the GOP…

Poor sap, longing for what will never be and probably never was.

It seems to me, reading his column, he favors torture merely because Al Qaeda is a different breed of human. But are they not different precisely because of our actions around the world? And then would we not be similar to them precisely because we have stooped to their level?

I counted 24 military excursions since 1900’s — that is one almost every 4 years that the US has been involved. Because of our might, we subject countries to our whims and passions without taking their cultures into account. We have inhabited the Middle East — not out of purely altruistic purposes such as democracy (otherwise we would have some serious issues with Saudi Arabia (where the majority of the hijackers originated)) or Israel, but out of the need to keep the oil flowing. THUS, not only upsetting people in the region, but killing their people through conflicts resulting from our unbridled support of Israel and our providing weapons to that region that kill their people. Atta watch his city get bombed and later became one of the terrorist. Cause and effect.

What Friedman is completely lacking in his thought process is that while we trumpet our superiority — as he does with his supposed intellect — there are others out there that feel justified in thinking that we are not as good as we think we are. It does not justify terrorist knocking down the towers just as it does not justify hitting Iraq with a “big stick” (as Friedman has described what we should do to a country every now and again to show them who is boss) and decimating their infrastructure that has seen tens of thousands killed and up to two million displaced — and it does not justify us torturing prisoners that may or may not be guilty.

So if we expect them to honor treating humans respectfully, we ought to always do the same. To do so otherwise, gives them the excuse that they are merely following in our footsteps.

Attackerman is front-paged!
Stress Positions, Sleep Deprivation and Category Errors: A Former SERE Instructor’s Perspective

Thomas Friedman is a deeply ridiculous man.

And to top it off, he’s a putz, too.

Since the article brings up 9-11 and terror and government response.

Gather round the campfire by the lake as I recall my living history.
Every generation comes upon their moment of truth.

My generation’s 9-11 was in fact the Kennedy Assassination.
Then as now we were terrorized.
Then as now we witnessed murder in broad daylight.
The Kennedy’s were a bright youthful moment of promise much the same as the Obama’s.
The truth lie in the Zupruder film buried for many years. The clip show a head shot from the front.
Strange explanations started to surface before the blood was dry. First the assassination of the assassin in front of us on TV, in Police custody. After this came the lone gunman theory. Patsy nailed case closed. Opps someone proves with the radio time line, a cheap mail order Mauser would demand a perfect three shots.( Notice how the amatuer pilots were perfect flying jets beyond their design limits for the first time each but they were perfect)Three hits from three shots became indefensible.

Along comes arlin with a single bullet theory of a bullet jumping around in mid-air to answer the question how he could be the lone gunman.Don’t forget the front head shot that was never revealed in the evidence, a forth shot.
So there you have it how a commission isn’t the search for truth but the vehicle to derail the needed truth for the whole country.
And the key to the cover-up. The records were sealed for 90 years. At the FBI they call that a clue.
Now you couldn’t answer any questions thanks to arlin’s magical bullet theory.

don’t be surprised if he shorted the stock to make billions. the rich always have a way to get richer, even when the market is down.

There’s a defect in Friedman’s argument as ominous as a black hole in space:

I’m not good at remembering names, but one of our intelligence pros recently stated that we lost about as many US armed personnel in Iraq as died in the 9/11 tragedy because of suicide bombers and other fighters who “signed up” because of torture at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo.

No one calls the guy on this?

I wrote like the longest blog post I’ve ever written about this crap.

http://ugaliberal.blogspot.com…..-sick.html

After you are done vomiting go to public@nytimes.com to voice you’re belief that tom freeman should be removed for ethnic hate speech.
Good night all.
LP& U

What can one expect from the author of a book entitled The Earth is Flat?

Friedman’s tortured logic: I’m against torture unless the people we are torturing are bad.

I tend to disagree strongly with Thomas friedman of torture protecting America from another terrorist attack.

Thomas doesn’t remember the Anthrax attacks. They cleared congress? Oh, but that was only sent to two Democratic party member in congress that happened to have alot of influence on issues like the patriot act. Tom Dascle and Pat Lahey if I recall.

I imagine Thomas doesn’t count those road side bombs that killed Americans in Iraq. Nah, those weren’t attacks.

How much of Americas wealth and treasure was flushed down the torture hole?

yet, if Thomas really feels this torture is good workable action to take in times of despair. Why he doesn’t call for the torture of Wall Street Bankers is beyond me? Just think of the theafts and crimes we could prevent in the future by torturing intell out of them.

And the Bush Adm, we could find out what Cheney had in his man size safe in his office or what was arrainged at that secret energy meeting he had.

Maybe Bush would tell us where he was getting the alcohol and drugs he was taking. I Lewis “Scooter” Libby ( Inmate#28301-016 ) could have told Pat Fitzgerald the truth of the treasonous act of outing a covert agent.

Mr Friedman, is there anything else that Hitler did that you would enjoy America using? Bush and Cheney used torture out of fear and fear alone. Because they were helpless in knowing what to do. How else do you explain invading Iraq instead of Florida. At least many of the 9/11 terrorist came from Florida. They learned to fly there.