Well said. The truth is often much more sinister than the movies.

I am optimistic that Americans do not want to be the monsters that we are collectively. I hope that someday the truth will come out in "main stream" media outlets where it will slap us all in the face.

I dare to hope, but I am not exactly holding my breath over here.

In Friedman's case would that not be the "Infallible Erect"?

Although I guess it does not matter, given the new compact definition of the F.U. above.

Glenn Greenwald: [But with this intense Friedmanesque revisionism well underway -- whereby war cheerleaders like Friedman were Right and Good all along and it was only the incompetent Bush and Rumsfeld who ruined everything with their "bumbling" -- it seems increasingly likely that the opposite lesson will be learned. Attacking, invading and occupying other countries in order to change their governments to ones we prefer is the smart, wise and just thing to do. Friedman's term for it today is "collaborating with them to build progressive politics."]

The “collaboration” and “progressive politics” Freidman refers to are responsible for the almost complete deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of Iraq, the violent deaths of well over a million Iraqi civilians, the forced dislocation of millions more and the proliferate, criminal spending on the privatization of war with money borrowed by America from China and shoveled into the maw of the American War Machine and the banking system that controls and finances it as fast as it can be printed.

Freidman is only continuing in his role as a Paid Propagandist to Power by doing this his latest re-write of history. Let’s face it – disgraced and discredited, (which is what should be the fate of all the shameless and deliberate media liars who cheerleaded and bamboozled their fellow citizens into an illegal war that didn’t even benefit the US, (which it grievously injured in all ways), isn’t going to be the fate of this particular mountebank or any of the others who smeared this stain all over their tattered reputations. That would make them worthless to their handlers. Think how much has already been invested in them.

And isn’t it disgraceful that Freidman and the rest are being paid handsomely to self-servingly rewrite history by those charged with the responsibility for keeping us informed and our government honest?

That’s the kicker for me.

NO THEY DID NOT. As Tim3 points out we were not attacked by the Afghan government which as been the left's dividing line here for years. Even if you argue they hid OBL that doesn't pass muster as a "cassus belli".

As usual the left finds itself pursuing actions for which they loudly denounce others. Tsk. Tsk.

Just as it is wrong to blame and entire people for the attack carried out by 19 Saudi terrorists, it is wrong to blame "The Left" for supporting a war that many of us vehemently opposed.

Shooter, many on the Left (what you would call the fringe leftist lunatics) believe that we have no moral right to start wars in foreign lands; that we ought to slash the military budget and use that money to look after our own people (as in universal single-payer health care, for example). Unfortunately "The Left" hasn't had a real voice in this country's politics since the '30s.

But then, perhaps you are confusing establishment Democrats with The Left? Because, as you see with Obama, establishment Democrats are hardly your rabid left-wingers, being instead centrists who do not challenge the basic premise that we have the right to "project force" wherever required.

"the most important reason for the Iraq war: to try to collaborate with Iraqis to build progressive politics and rule of law in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world,"

This the fundamental problem of Iraq war hawks like that is this. As laudable a goal of spreading democracy is, why was it necessary to wage war to do it? Saddam was 65 years old and not in the best of health. We dealt with him before. Why couldn't we have simply negotiated a Saddam exit strategy? Why didn't Bush or Friedman consider this a doable alternative?

I was surprised to see in the November 10 Issue of the New Yorker a fawning article by Ian Parker about Friedman, "The Bright Side: Thomas Friedman's Green Dream." Ian Parker allowed Friedman to flim-flam him that he, Friedman, was "really, really torn" about the war, citing a column of January 26, 2003 where he said we'd either find we had "won the Arab Germany or the Arab Yugoslavia" and claiming that his columns showed his struggle about justifying the war. Apparently Parker did not read the March 12, 2003 NYT column that said those who did not think confronting Saddam was legitimate were "knee-jerk liberals and pacifists," and of course Friedman did not draw his attention to this. Friedman pulled a fast one by referring only to his columns, although even they are bad enough, as Glenn has extensively documented. The TV interview showed him salivating at the time at the prospect of taking out a big stick and shoving it down some Muslim throats.

Friedman is now going to take his new environmental credentials and run for more books, and it appears he will get away with it. The New Yorker joins the list of media sources that have lost credibility.

ANOTHER STINK BOMB BEING LEFT BEHIND BY BUSH, AND THE PREVAILING MINDSET THAT THE US CAN DO WHAT IT PLEASES WITH FOREIGN LANDS, IS SOMALIA.

OH, RIGHT, WE'RE CONCERNED ABOUT PIRACY--AND OUR PRESS TREATS IT LIKE IT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE--BUT OUR INTERFERENCE IN THAT LONG SUFFERING COUNTRY BEGAN UNDER BUSH I, AND JUST WHEN THE ISLAMIC COURTS MOVEMENT PROMISED TO BRING SOME STABILITY TO THE COUNTRY, BUSH II FUNDED A DECEMBER 2006 ETHIOPIAN INVASION, THAT ONCE AGAIN LEFT THE COUNTRY LAWLESS AND ITS POPULATION STARVING AND SUFFERING EVEN MORE DEPRIVATIONS THAN BEFORE. IN A LAWLESS, STARVING LAND, PIRACY AND CRIME TAKES HOLD.

THE COURTS MOVEMENT IS ONCE AGAIN ABOUT TO REGAIN CONTROL, AND THEY WILL SUPPRESS PIRACY TOO. MAYBE THE FRIEDMAN'S WILL LET THEM ALONE, CONSERVATIVE MUSLIMS OR NOT, BUT I DOUBT IT. WE JUST WON'T LEARN.

EVERTHING BUSH/RICE/CHENEY TOUCHES TURNS INTO DISASTER.