Who are you and what have you done with Thomas Friedman?

What's the expression? Rats fleeing a sinking ship? It doesn't appear that bush II or Cheney have internalized the concept of "democracy" though, so any of Friedman's belated bleatings are in vain.

On the one hand, pogge, I think it probably is significant that Friedman is arguing against an attack on Iran. He is something of a mouthpiece, so presumably there is some consensus of powerful people behind this column.

On the other, I still feel as sick reading these excerpts as I ever have reading Friedman. The ethnocentrism is nauseating. The total denial of responsibility is outrageous.

Friedman's readings of what is happening in both countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, are done strictly through the prism of American interest in each. Of course I don't want to see the U.S. bombing or even fiddling in Iran (which I'm sure they're already doing), but in his crass eagerness to back up the Baker party (I'm guessing), he is lying about social realities in Iran. God, I am a defender of Iran against the Cheneyites, but I don't lie about what happens there, which he is doing.

On the other side of the looking-glass, of course the Saudi regime is horrifically oppressive, first of all to its own people. So who is going to do the work of turning up all of Friedman's earlier cozy writings about Saudi Arabia? And who the hell does he think has collaborated with those decadent monsters for the last four generations or so, has kept them in power?

Friedman writes blenderized crap propaganda at the service of particular power groups in the U.S., and this is more of that. It is interesting only in so far as it gives us some indication of which way some influential groups are tending in the U.S. at the moment. It is obviously bad news for Cheney-Bush that Friedman has been unleashed to write against them, but really, why should we find any greater significance than that in the overgeneralizing garbage that he writes?

Friedman doesn't want to wear the House of Saud, but it is a little late in the day for that conversion, I would say. This is sheer chutzpah. The kid who killed his parents is now throwing himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan.

And just for the record, I don't want to see KSA bombed either. I don't want to see any place bombed by the Friedmanizers.

My comments should in no way be taken to mean that I think Friedman has suddenly grown a brain, merely that, as you suggest, he feels free to write against what is obviously administration policy.

Oh, and my comments should in no way be taken to mean that I thought that anyone thought that.

I see the significance of what he has done -- in an American context. It still makes me chew nails. The man is so prejudiced, so comfortable in his own privilege, so smug.

Chomp chomp chomp. I'll stop now.

You guys hear that he married rich and is worth about $2 billion?

Rafsanjani's win at the last election may very much explain Friedman's about-face. The corrupt cleric now has the upperhand over populist Ahmadinejad. He is for rapprochement with the West (the corporations, of course). That's Friedman's world. Still if he can help to halt Bush & goons in their catastrophic mission re. Iran, that's good.

Didn't Rush Limbaugh say something to the effect that he no longer had to kowtow to the bunch of lying Republicans?

Now Friedman sees that Arabs are people too.

Sounds like, welcome to the angst of life, boys - join J. Alfred in saying:

"I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."