Tom Friedman says next six months in Iraq critical... again and again..

Tom Friedman's Flexible Deadlines
Iraq's 'decisive' six months have lasted three and a half years

5/16/06

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman is considered by many of his media colleagues to be one of the wisest observers of international affairs. "You have a global brain, my friend," MSNBC host Chris Matthews once told Friedman (4/21/05). "You're amazing. You amaze me every time you write a book."

Such praise is not uncommon. Friedman's appeal seems to rest on his ability to discuss complex issues in the simplest possible terms. On a recent episode of MSNBC's Hardball (5/11/06), for example, Friedman boiled down the intricacies of the Iraq situation into a make-or-break deadline: "Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."

That confident prediction would seem a lot more insightful, however, if Friedman hadn't been making essentially the same forecast almost since the beginning of the Iraq War. A review of Friedman's punditry reveals a long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer.



"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
(New York Times, 11/30/03)


"What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?"
(NPR's Fresh Air, 6/3/04)

more of his flexible deadline.....


http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2884

to talk a lot, with little meaningful to say, similar to most op-ed columnists in NYT, WApost and other papers.

Is he shilling the paperback version of his foolish book?

Friedman is a worthless shit.

cuts Chimpy and his admin to SHREDS. I never heard him quite like this.

After whoring for the war like a madman, and most of Smirky's other policy decisions, now that they have all gone to hell in a handbasket, he's all like, 'man who is this stupid guy with these stupid ideas,' failing of course to look in the fucking mirror for his answer.

I seem to be hearing an awful lot of bitching and complaining lately. But, notice? I don't see any of them switching their party affiliations.

Hm?

if it weren't so sad that he's considered such a sage.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Mr. Friedman has no military service.

His last book, "The Flat Earth" is a monument to tunnel vision and folly. You are correct about his perpetually framing the iraq war in six month chunks.

that would make 14 times around the block

I wonder who he feels the next 6 months are so critical to...
:)

Why can't he just GO AWAY? He thinks he knows it all,and doesn't know SHIT.I never could stomach him from day one. :puke: