Join the crowd, I thought it would be last summer, but TOO MANY PEOPLE pitched a bitch about Iran invasion and, THANK GOD, ruined my prediction.

For god's sake (or, GOD'S SAKE, if your name is Meyer), tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday and you're carrying on about pugnacious Persians and jumpy Jews. So, whther it's football or foreign relations, bombs away is the American way. Get with the program.
I say: the Green Bay Packers by three goals.

He gets a lot of grief from liberal bloggers, but Thomas Friedman wrote a good piece on Wednesday pointing out why we can and should pursue diplomacy with Iran. He did a lot to dispute the "crazy Iranians" view that too many Americans have, and even went so far as to say that settling the US-Iran dispute would do more to stabilize the region than settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Does anyone know how it can be viewed without being a subscriber to the TimesSelect service?

"He gets a lot of grief from liberal bloggers,"

As well he should. Even a stopped clock can be right twice a day, so if you write a couple of columns a week for many years you might type something sensible once in a while--maybe a cat walks across the keyboard or something. There's no one alive more overrated than Tom Friedman--as the leading bloviator on globalization in the 90's he totally missed the facts that led Joseph Stiglitz to say that antiglobalization protestors were partly right. Even Krugman has come around on that, though in the 90's he and Friedman took turns bashing the puppet-carrying protestors. And did the great friend of free trade notice that there were millions of people dying of disease who might need more than IMF austerity measures? Nope.

His other great area of expertise? The Middle East. So he lies about what happened at Camp David and supports the invasion of Iraq.

But he did say something sensible about Iran in this column. However, being Friedman, he can't stop there, but has to mix in the usual Friedmanesque crap. Friedman's comment about the I/P conflict taking a back seat is, first, a slap at Jimmy Carter and second, a not-so-subtle way of saying that the reason there isn't peace in the I/P conflict is because Iran supports Hezbollah and Hamas. In other words, the US and Israel are trying the best they can to come to a just solution, but Iran is standing in the way.

Whistler, just google a phrase from it every now and then. Some masochist will eventually post the whole thing. Meanwhile, I'm broke and for less than half the price of Times Select, I'm willing to take a rubber mallet to the head of anyone possessed of an uncontrollable urge to read Friedman. Less damage and more affordable.

If you do decide to go "all Iran all the time" let me know if I can help. There's a ton of info out there about the imminence of an attack on Iraq.

Hell, there's a ton of info just from the PNAC and AEI folks.

The war drums are beating harder now because the AIPAC-PNAC-AEI nexus realizes that this is their best opportunity to destabilize the entire middle east. Dumbya doesn't need much (if any) prompting to launch a catastrophic attack against Iran. With the glaring exception of H. Clinton, all probable presidential successors will be a much harder sell. AIPAC wants the middle east reduced to chaos and would rather not wait another 4-8 years if it can possibly avoid it.

I think I can pinpoint the moment I became convinced war on Iran is on. It was somewhere between 12:20 and 12:45 on Monday, January 29, standing in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building, listening to a very junior aide of John Warner's trying to pooh-pooh concerns about an Iran war as "conspiracy theory," and then in the next breath blaming Iran for our troubles in Iraq.

Uh huh.

You guys think so small. Who cares if we bomb Iran? The interesting question is, Which country do we bomb next and next and next?

There are about 200 countries in the world, 199 of which HATE America and MUST be bombed! Actually make that 199.5 because the US of A has been a little self-hating lately.

Now think of the axis of the evil as the top 3 america haters. Once you bomb them, then you get another top 3, and so on.

As I argued brilliantly in my last appearance before AIPAC, Ireland and Israel are next in line after Iran. How do I know that? Brains, my friend: brains. Iraq, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica.. (Geez, even the CIA could figure out that one.)

Jesus Christ on a crossbow, just when I'm beginning to think New Republic can't get any more vile, they prove me wrong. They're not content to just insult our intelligence, they have to slander it.

There's a hole in Halliburton's arm
Where the money goes
And that's their oil in Iran
Everybody knows

They're going to wait until March 9th, the opening of Frank Miller's 'The 300'. Cross marketing.

Whistler Blue - If I wanted to read Tom Friedman, the work-around I could use would be my public library, which not only has the NY Times on hand physically, but also has electronic access to it once I've signed in from home. Maybe your own public library has something similar.

I don't do this, because jurassic pork at http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/ posts the Times Select columnists who are [in my limited perspective] actually worth reading - e.g. Krugman, Bob Herbert, Frank Rich.