My LTTE to NYT on Friedman's slander on liberals.

[Inland]

Keeping a letter to exactly 150 words really cuts down on all the snotty, sarcastic things one WANTS to say.

*********************


Mr. Friedman suggests a national dialogue while implying that the sole interest of liberals ("with a few exceptions") is to keep the Bush team from having a success. Given that slander, what can any moderate-to-left person say in this supposed national dialogue that won't be dismissed as a mere partisan attempt to politically injure Bush? By casting doubt on liberal's motives, Friedman rules out the ideas of the very group of people who have been the most correct on Iraq issues.

With that attitude, there isn't going to be a truthful, honest and thoughtful dialogue on Iraq now, just as there hasn't been one to date. Bush will continue to do as he pleases, any opposition and critiques will continue to be dismissed as un-American or merely partisan, and the intel and "facts" will continue to be fixed around Bush's chosen policy. Liberals will be right, and ignored, as before.

[wryter2000]

1. That's a great one

The word limit probably made your letter better than it would have been if longer. Sweet and to the point.

:yourock:

[otohara]

2. Very Good Letter

I bet they get a ton of letters about this stupid ass column.

[HootieMcBoob]

3. Excellent letter

:toast: Hopefully we'll see it in print.

[understandinglife]

4. One small suggestion.

You may want to substitute 'libel' for 'slander' given that friedbrain expressed his pedantic insults in writing.

Oh, and, it is an excellent letter!

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - We have all the evidence of mendacity and illegal war-making we need to indict and prosecute Bush, Blair and every other neoconster scum-bag on the planet having any involvement in the Bush's illegal war on Iraq and all the torture and other atrocities that have been committed since August 2002.

[Inland]

5. Never!!!!!!!

No, you are right. But it's too late. I sent it.

[Eric J in MN]

6. Good, I hope they print it (nt)

nt

[Brotherjohn]

7. His statement was just patently ridiculous. He said LIBERALS didn't want

... to talk about Iraq? If I'm not mistaken, liberals have been trying to get people to talk about Iraq since Day One! And they're just about the ONLY people who want to talk about Iraq now!

Friedman is truly living in a fantasy world.

[Inland]

8. Right. Liberals were IGNORED when they talked about Iraq.

Bush marginalized them, ridiculed them...and they were right.

Liberals told Bush exactly how to come out with a disarmed Iraq, a united world, and with any luck, no war. If Bush had listened, he would be at 80% still and we would be (grudgingly) calling him an able and clever international player.

But he didn't listen, and suddenly its liberals who forgot to contribute. Suddenly its "nobody could have EVER predicted that (insert debacle here)", when even a doofus like me could have and did, along with people in the state and DOD who were also ignored.

[gratuitous]

9. Friedman's assertion WAS moronic

I'm more than willing to talk about Iraq until the cows come home, but the price of admission in the popular media is that you must accept that invading Iraq was the correct thing to do. If you don't sign up for that premise, you don't get to talk about Iraq on the teevee, or on the radio, and certainly not in the pages of the New York Times.

[Inland]

10. One has to ignore whose been right and whose been wrong

I'm allowed to talk about Iraq, but only if it begins from the premise that Bush was right all along in all the big things.

Just saying something like hey, I think this was doomed to failure from day one and that's why I opposed the war and think we should bug out now, is illegitimate.

First you have to presume that some minor change in the policy can make it work. And that change can't be replacing the people in charge, becasue that too is implicitly a knock on Bush.

[stopbush]

11. Another moronic statement from TF:

"Our core problem in Iraq remains Donald Rumsfeld's disastrous decision - endorsed by President Bush - to invade Iraq on the cheap."

here's what he should have said:

"Our core problem in Iraq remains President Bush's disastrous decision to invade Iraq."

Note to Tommy Boy: Iraq is not "winnable." Never was, never will be. Illegal, aggressive, imperialistic wars have a way of being unwinnable by their very nature. How does one "win" when the rule of law is the loser?

He is SUCH an asshat!

[Inland]

12. Well, he could at least argue that a HUGE invasion

as opposed to a mere 200,000 troops, would have worked better.

What really pisses me off about Friedman, aside from the last gratuitous jab, is that for two years he has been declaring that we are at a crossroads, a tipping point, nows the time to whatever....and it gets ignored as a suggestion, and next month its another crossroads.

Why hasn't he just realized that hey, he's proclaimed our occupation dying for two years and isn't it time he was consistent enought to proclaim it dead?

One of the sentences I edited out was a snotty aside that Friedman will write a column calling for a national dialogue as critically important to have right now every six months until 2010, without reference to any of the prior ones..

[MrPrax]

13. Friedman is not even coherent...

Let's play the newest game: Dissect The FryGuy

All the kids are doing it!! like Alex and Especially Mike

Ever since Iraq's remarkable election, the country has been descending deeper and deeper into violence.(it's been going on longer than that...since March 2003 I believe)

But no one in Washington wants to talk about it.
actually Tom, Rummy was talking about it yesterday and making a fool of himself as usual

Conservatives don't want to talk about it because, with a few exceptions, they think their job is just to applaud whatever the Bush team does.
Wrong... there is a growing chorus of them


Liberals don't want to talk about Iraq because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed.
Shit...that's not even original, Bush said just as much as that 'roll out' theme at his fundraiser and I might add, Chimp said it better and he's isn't an NYT columnist--"If leaders of the other party have innovative ideas, let's hear them. But if they have no ideas or policies except obstruction, they should step aside and let others lead."

ETC ETC...

Send your letter--Your in esteemed company

:toast:

OH Tom and his crayon marks can bee seen Here

[Inland]

19. The latest friedman book got panned

I had read that review, and it seem to me the book suffered from the same sort of lack of concrete meaning that his columns suffer from.

It's not so much that I disagree, it's just that at some level of abstraction it's meaningless.

So what to do now, Tom? Why, talk. Not that talking is a bad idea, in fact its a great idea before a war is brought, but talking isn't a solution, and the great principles have to be put in practical terms. He isn't doing that, and what's worse, has told the liberals that they might as well stay home.

I don't even know how liberal I am, but he can count me out. I'm tired of telling Bush how to be a decent president and getting insulted for my pains.

[KnowerOfLogic]

14. Good; i notice that friedman doesn't have a contact email on the

page where his column is printed, like some other NYT columnists. I guess he doesn't want to deal with people who have the nerve to point out how full of shit he is.

[Jacobin]

15. The war cheerleader is just spinning to cover his

criminal actions in promoting this blunder.

His November column in the NYT before the invasion was entitled:

"Just Give War a Chance"

He's a complete and utter wanker.

[Inland]

18. Well, here's my take on Friedman

He was always saying that there was a right way to do things, and Bush wasn't doing it right, and that things could work out if drastic changes were made--that was his column every other week from long before the invasion.

Now, he is still saying that it's not too late. All we have to do is discuss it---it's just all his previous columns, this time without even a suggestion as to what to do except pow wow and figure out what to do.

If he were consistent, at some point he would say, now it's too late, you had a chance and you blew it. Instead, he's asking around for ideas. Jeez, louise.

My own feeling on the war--should have let inspectors continue. Once we were in, a really active, competent, culturally sophisticated and internationally oriented president might have made it work. But I dont' care if there is a plan that would work or not, with Bush in charge. You don't draw up a play for the last shot and have the shot taken by Will Perdue.

[Cocoa]

16. you nailed it

exactly right, any productive discussion has to start with some trust and Friedman's slander makes that impossible.

And he's stealing his brilliant ideas, without credit, from the "#1 liberal in the Senate," John Kerry.

I hope they print your letter. :toast:

[Inland]

20. Maybe he wants a discussion like Bush's town hall meetings on SS

Fill a room with people of one viewpoint and discuss away.

That would just be Bush's WH all over again. How well has that worked out?

[burythehatchet]

17. my view of Friedman nhas gone from curiously amused

to something worse.