Isn't it amazing what they will print?

I took a class from Friedman a few years ago. He's a little excitable but his understanding of the Middle East is phenomenal.

I think to go from "they won't buy our GM good but they smoke" to "they're completely wrong on Iraq" is the kind of flawed logic that gets one an 'F' in a Rhetoric 101 class.

i agree with both matts and barry. although i often disagree with friedman, i generally have a lot of respect for him and don't think he's an idiot. he really does know a lot about the region, knows arabic, and has lived with arabs. thus, unlike virtually every mideast pundits, he does not have any implicit anti-arab assumptions underlying his writing and seems to understand the complexity of the region. i recognize that even when i think his conclusions are wrong.

which is why the last column was so disappointing. for all his knowledge of the mideast, he seems to have no insight into european politics. instead he falls back on the simple-minded idea that europeans are anti-war-in-iraq just to be anti-american.

its really odd, for all the times the friedman has written about how the arab populace is not as knee-jerk anti-american as they are usually portrayed, why does he fall for the same idea when it comes to europeans?

This jerk is the biggest IDIOT and self-hating Jew on the planet I think. He not only gets it consistently wrong - he makes money at it - not bad for someone who's actually educated and should know better.