FYI: guests on HBO's Real Time w/Bill Maher tonight:

[babylonsister]

This Friday, Bill welcomes roundtable guests actor Jason Alexander, author/theologian Reza Aslan, and Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA). Plus, via satellite, reporter Michael Ware.

[SoFlaJet]

1. Kingston

will have his talking points stuffed in his pockets.There should be a topic of predictions as to what he'll spew tonight.I'll start he'll mention fighting them over there rather than here at least once...

[Warren Stupidity]

3. media to blame media to blame media to blame nt.

[in_cog_ni_to]

2. Michael Ware is GREAT! He is a reporter who's in Iraq and NOT embedded

with the Pentagon. He tells the TRUTH about the disaster that is Iraq. Should be a good show.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. I hope he survives long enough to make the show.

and that is not sarcasm.

[PA Democrat]

12. Agree. Michael Ware won't take any of the blame the media crap.

I've heard him interviewed several times and he was brutally honest about the mess in Iraq.

[maine_raptor]

4. Someone ought to send Reza Aslan

a copy of Bill Moyer's Wake Forest speech before the show.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. Aslan, hmmm...

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/08/203604.php

Read this interview. It seems that Reza, and perhaps I am overstating it, is ok with our marching in and killing 30,000 - 100,000+ Iraqis as everything is going to work out just fine with a nice islamic democracy sure to blossom in the richly fertilized killing fields of Iraq. Self loathing Islamic intellectual? Apologist for war crimes? Like I said, prehaps I am overstating it.

[jayfish]

11. Boy, That Guy Was Really On The Kool-Aid.

But that was almost a year ago. Things appear to have gotten much worse on the ground. It would be interesting if Bill read that interview and challenged Aslan on some of the statements he made in it.

You're Iranian by birth - do you fear the US will attack Iran?

RA: There is no chance of any military action against Iran. I think that a big part of Bush's rhetoric is to keep Iran on its toes. I think that this administration understands that pushing Iran too hard destroys any chance of peace and stability in Iraq.

Why?

RA: Iran plays a big role in maintaining peace and stability in Iraq. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have anywhere near the results we have now. If Iran is pushed, they'll unleash their forces on Iraq and all chances of peace and stability in Iraq go out the window.

But while you and I might understand that, the problem is that the Iranians do not. I was in Iran recently and let me tell you, the people are absolutely convinced the bombs will fall any minute now. They are beefing up their military and readying them to fight an insurgency should the Americans come in.

Even Iranian moderates are talking belligerently to the US — they're putting up a good front and hinting at their capabilities to attack with a nuclear weapon, which no one, including the CIA, believe they have. But they learned from the lessons of Iraq and North Korea that even the illusion of having a nuclear weapon is enough to keep the Americans at bay.

What I mean is that what has made Iraq a success is that the Iraqis have succeeded despite the American blunders. Iraqis themselves in the early stages of this postwar wrangling co-opted the agenda of the Americans; they co-opted the election process

Well al-Sistani was the one that forced this election on the Bush administration.

RA: Yes, precisely - by taking this out of the hands of the coalition, they rewrote the narrative of the Iraqi war. And, the President is tying his line to the process that the Iraqis started.

Now that the Iraqis have decided to create their own vision of what Iraq is to look like, that vision is spreading to the rest of the Islamic world.

Looks like he got suckered and we'll see tonight whether he learned his lesson.


Jay

[MADem]

13. Well, he's IRANIAN....it's sorta like expecting a Hatfield to love a McCoy

I imagine there's a long list of maimed and dead in his family tree alone from that prolonged misadventure known as the Iran-Iraq war. All politics is local...

From his bio: Until recently, he was both Visiting Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle East Studies at the University of Iowa and the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has served as a legislative assistant for the Friends’ Committee on National Legislation in Washington D.C., and was elected president of Harvard’s Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, a United Nations Organization committed to solving religious conflicts throughout the world.

He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Slate, Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the Nation and has appeared on Meet The Press, Hardball, The Daily Show, and Nightline. His first book, No god but God has been translated into half a dozen languages and was short-listed for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award. Born in Iran, he now lives in Santa Monica and New Orleans, where he is at work on a historical novel to be published in the fall of 2007.

I guess the best way to listen to him is with an understanding of his background (southwest Asian, a Persian, not an Arab). If he's a warmonger, he probably didn't have much in common with his former employers, the Quakers!

[Warren Stupidity]

15. Working for the quakers or not...

"Within the scope of your book, do you think the Americans can bring democratic reforms to the Middle East in the way they are going about it, or have we blundered into a culture that we haven't understood?

RA: The great irony of all of this is the President by his own admission, had such a simplistic view of the complexion of Middle East culture and politics that he really didn't know what he had gotten into, you know, this belief that all we had to do was drop some bombs on Baghdad and Iraqis would be throwing flowers at us and some kind of Jeffersonian democracy would bloom in Iraq. Anyone who knew anything about the region knew this was ludicrous.

But when I say that there is great irony here what I mean is that maybe we needed someone with such a simplistic view to allow the Muslims to take advantage of the opportunity presented to them to build an indigenous Islamic democracy.

What I mean is that what has made Iraq a success is that the Iraqis have succeeded despite the American blunders. Iraqis themselves in the early stages of this postwar wrangling co-opted the agenda of the Americans; they co-opted the election process"

He seems to think that Iraq is a success. I'm sorry but that is at best a complete misunderstanding of the situation, and more likely a dishonest apology of war crimes.

[MADem]

16. The way I read that excerpt is a bit different

He says that the American agenda in Iraq was "ludicrous." That Monkeyboy blundered in there with his own agenda, and those wily Arabs have taken advantage of the situation and used this mess in their own way, for their own purposes. It seems to me that he says that the Iraqis have taken this sow's ear of an invasion and fashioned a crudely-made silk purse out of it: that they've "co-opted the agenda of the Americans."

Of course, what the result will be after it all shakes out will likely be an Islamic state, if the thing can hold together at all--and that is by no means assured.

But it doesn't really sound like a ringing endorsement of American intervention. It sounds more like Iraqis making the best of a bad situation.

I've seen this guy here and there, but I must admit only listened with half an ear. I'll pay a bit more attention this evening...

[Connie_Corleone]

7. I love Michael Ware! He truly is a no-holds barred reporter in Iraq.

[ThomWV]

8. I'd Watch But I Can't Stand Maher

Arrogant whiny little punk is all I see in him. Nasty, unpleasant, trivial, hubris, words like that come to mind when I see him on the screen.

[Lochloosa]

9. ...

:popcorn:

[MADem]

10. I think it is one of the best shows on TV, myself

I often disagree with Maher, but he's witty, he mixes it up, and if the panel is weighted towards one view, he takes the opposing one just to keep the ball in the air.

[jayfish]

14. I'm With You.

I think that we have to get away from this notion that there will ever be a talking-head that falls in line with 100% of our individual views. Hell most DUer's don't agree 100% with each others views. Bill is funny and he speaks in agreement with me much of the time.

Jay