Iraq: Going just like Tom Friedman wanted

[tgnyc]

From January 28, 2005, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman:

This is a tough call, but I hope the elections go ahead as scheduled on Jan. 30. We have to have a proper election in Iraq so we can have a proper civil war there.

Then in September of the same year:

Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind.

So is Friedman psyched now, or what?

http://intelligencesquad.blogspot.com/2006/03/is-this-kind-of-civil-war-tom-friedman.html

[kenny blankenship]

1. Oh marvelous. So Tommy's got a second genocide to champion now

he should be so frenzied that he is, to borrow the Governator's famous phrase, "...cumming day and night."
Hate to have be the one who mops up around the Friedman residence.

[Lerkfish]

2. can't speak for him, but I always knew the end result of removing Saddam

would be civil war. And I'm no frigging diplomacy expert.
As bad and as ironfisted as Hussein was, he kept a lid on a very volatile pressure cooker.
I said, way back before we invaded, on another political board, that IF we wanted to remove him, we had to do so with resulting civil war in mind, and find a prudent plan for AFTER that happened.

No one in the administration seemed willing to entertain that obvious reality.

only saying, Me pointing that out did not mean I WANTED civil war there...just that it was the obvious result.

[wtmusic]

4. agree with you 100% on predicting the outcome

Even if we had totally overwhelmed Iraq with half a million troops (what Abizaid originally suggested) it would have only guaranteed relative peace for ten years or so.

What the administration consistently ignores, either willfully or with criminal negligence, is the pride of the Iraqi people. There are not enough arms in the world fight a civilian population for its homeland.

[tgnyc]

7. The thing is, he knew it too. He was just thingking it would be a one-

sided affair: the Shiite government and the Kurds quickly squashing the Sunnis. Then we all live happily ever after.

[wtmusic]

12. The problem was the "squashing" part

unless you're really going to get Hitler on them, which most people (even Republicans) find distasteful, they will come back with a vengeance.

[tgnyc]

13. Yeah, he was always operating in fantasyland if he didn't think

this was coming.

[wtmusic]

3. Daddy Tom says if the Sunnis don't "come around"

they will be spanked and sent to their rooms. Bad Muslims!

[European Socialist]

5. M$M's darling has a skull full of mush. nt

[yurbud]

6. BEST FRIEDMAN: If war goes well, $6 barrel oil, bad $60, Friday: $63

He said a worse case scenario would be if war dragged on or Saddam attacked other countries oil fields.

One of those happened.

$6 or $60;

Thomas L. Friedman.
Jul 31, 2002

Reading the papers lately, I've lost track of whether the Pentagon plans to invade Iraq from three sides or four, and whether we will be using Jordan, Kuwait or Diego Garcia as our main launching pad. But one thing I haven't seen much planning for is the impact an attack on Iraq would have on the world's oil market. Depending on how the war went, that impact could be very bad and lead to a sharp spike in oil prices, like $60-a-barrel oil. But -- wait a minute -- it could also be very good, and lead to $6-a-barrel oil that would weaken OPEC and, maybe, also weaken the Arab autocrats who depend on high oil prices to finance their illegitimate regimes and buy off opponents.


****

Let's start with the $60-a-barrel scenario. (The price today is in the mid-$20's.) While the Pentagon keeps leaking its war plans, no one ever writes about what Saddam's war plans might be. What if Saddam responds by firing Scuds with chemical or biological warheads at Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti oilfields? The world market could lose not only Iraq's two million barrels a day, but millions more. And what if the war drags on and we have as much trouble finding Saddam as we've had finding Osama?

[kenny blankenship]

8. Beautiful find

what an asshole he is, and I mean that in the worst way possible.
He should be facing jailtime right now, following Judy Miller's trial and sentencing for spreading Fascist war propaganda.
We tried Julius Streicher for the same, and these two should receive nothing less.

[yurbud]

14. we should mail that one to him and ask for comment in his column

[yurbud]

15. Pat Robertson and some neocons mentioned this idea of breaking OPEC but

I don't think they ever meant it.

It was just a way to rope in those too smart to see the terror and WMD angle was BS--make it seem like there was a benefit to the economy rather than an asset grab for the oil companies not us.

[tgnyc]

9. But at least we're getting the civil war *we* want

[Terran1212]

10. Robert Fisk: Friedman an "old friend" but "increasingly messianic"

In my opinion, he's always been a coward who has a USA superiority complex.

In a recent column he LITERALLY (I'm not exaggerating) said that the USA is the only nation on earth that can "save the world" from dissolution.

[Jacobin]

11. Nostradamus, he's not

He's a fucking Dweeb. Cheered for the war to start and then when it goes in the shitter, like Everyone predicted, he's like.....:shrug: oh well, that little parlor game was fun....what's next for me to write about?