War Was A Good Thing...

i think the war was teh bets thing we coulda done....WOOTWOOT!

You havent stated your reasons.
No point starting a new thread just to make a statement.
Please divulge................. :blink:

I wonder if someone is tossing chum into the waters...;)

:ninja:

I think I'd stay away from wizard forums.

I don't think this war was a good thing....but then again i never think war is a good thing!

they could have hired someone to sneak up behind Sadaam and smack his head with a solid gold tiolet seat!

Problem solved!

:lol:

weemouse: don't you think "war is good, who needs a reason?" is kind of equivalant to "war is never good?" in ignorance?

as for the joke assasination comment, the US law prohibits commisioned assasinations of foreign leaders... maybe you UK people coulda helped us out w/ that one? :D I dunno, aren't the laws more lax over there?
Here in the states we make a law about nearly anything that has even remote signifigance.

"US law prohibits commisioned assasinations of foreign leaders"

:lol:

since when do amercians ever follow any laws?! they always find a way around something.

with 'The Patriot Law' in full effect (which goes against everything the Bill of Rights states), i think the assasination of a foreign leader wouldn't be a biggie, they would just get it done and blame it on someone else (bin laden, al qaeda or some other phantom terrorist group)

Saddam is probably having tea with Rumsfeld right now.<_<

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Originally posted by ljossberir@21 May 2003 - 10:18
weemouse: don&#39;t you think "war is good, who needs a reason?" is kind of equivalant to "war is never good?" in ignorance?

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Hmmm...good point...but i don&#39;t know if it&#39;s the same kinda thing...there are people&#39;s lives at stake if a war goes ahead. I know what you mean tho - Sadaam is gone now thanks to the war, but there could have been another solution&#33;

i love this forum - food for thought and everything&#33;

:lol:

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Originally posted by MagicNakor@21 May 2003 - 01:31
I wonder if someone is tossing chum into the waters...;)

:ninja:

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I would bet that it is so.... <_<

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Originally posted by ljossberir@21 May 2003 - 09:18
weemouse: don&#39;t you think "war is good, who needs a reason?" is kind of equivalant to "war is never good?" in ignorance?

as for the joke assasination comment, the US law prohibits commisioned assasinations of foreign leaders... maybe you UK people coulda helped us out w/ that one? :D I dunno, aren&#39;t the laws more lax over there?
Here in the states we make a law about nearly anything that has even remote signifigance.

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Its always been illegal, never stopped the ANY intelligence service from doing it, if National Security is at stake.


Where &#39;National Security&#39; is the watchword, all &#39;Laws&#39; and &#39;Rights&#39; are on hold......and that is in ANY country, not just the USA.


The intelligence community only consider something illegal if they are caught, and then they can usually wriggle out of it.






Erm, unless they are after me, that isnt a complaint ;)

yah, srry for not staiting the reasons..i was in a hurry.. Saddam wasn&#39;t running his country like he should have.Saddam was killing his ppl&#33;...he needed to be taken outta power to save lives. i know some iraqi ppl died becuase of us, but its better they die, then millions of pl dying from nuclear weapons&#33; and um...why wouldn&#39;t you trust wizard forums? despite the name..no wizards reside there... :lol:

A GOOD THING???

NO war is ever a GOOD THING&#33; WHAT are YOU TALKING ABOUT???

Well... IF You are immune to human suffering, and ALL categories of CHAOS, I guess THEN it&#39;s ALL RIGHT&#33;

I come from a small country that has had to FIGHT for it&#39;s existence and I resent people&#39;s attitude to WAR like it was some kind of f****** VIDEOGAME&#33;

People will lose their homes, they lose their families, their loved ones.... and what for?

WE fought for indepenency and we got it.... not by war but by negotiations... finally.

And now we are one of the leading high-tech countries in the world. But there was a price.

Many of our fathers and our fathers fathers lost their lives or were seriously wounded and never fully recovered from the conflict and I raise my hat to those brave men who now are on poor pension or on social welfare... this country as so many others choose to forget their war-veterans and leave them all to waste forgetting the fact that if those men had NOT given their heart and soul for their country.... any of us morons would not be here today... writing stupid messages on the internet....

Well... in a nut-shell WAR is NEVER A GOOD THING&#33;&#33;&#33;

STAMP THAT INTO YOUR FOREHEAD (if You got one...), bonehead.

H.H. ;(

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but its better they die, then millions of pl dying from nuclear weapons&#33;

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Hello&#33;

They cant find ANY WMD.

And Rumsfeld came out and said yesterday they probably never will.

Closest he&#39;s come to admiting they lied to you all, and knew it from the start.


Jees, at least come up with something like "Coz we liberated all the Iraqi&#39;s"....who btw, are so grateful that the current political leaders told Tony Blaire to fuck off, they didnt want their names sullied by having their photos taken with him......

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Originally posted by Rat Faced@29 May 2003 - 23:39

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but its better they die, then millions of pl dying from nuclear weapons&#33;

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Hello&#33;

They cant find ANY WMD.

And Rumsfeld came out and said yesterday they probably never will.

Closest he&#39;s come to admiting they lied to you all, and knew it from the start.

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word. whoever the dufus was that suggested iraq would use a nuke showed an unusual amount of ignorance on several levels.

NOT THAT I WANTED TO GET INTO A HEATED DEBATE ABOUT THIS STUFF, BUT IT IS NOT REALY LIKE ANYONE COULD ACTUALLY STOP US WE ARE THE LAST TRUE SUPERPOWER. AND BESIDES YOU GUYS DIDN&#39;T ASK INDIA IF YOU COULD TAKE THEM OVER.

it would be funny. if it were a comedy. but its not.

washingtonpost.com
Bush: &#39;We Found&#39; Banned Weapons
President Cites Trailers in Iraq as Proof

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 31, 2003; Page A01


KRAKOW, Poland, May 30 -- President Bush, citing two trailers that U.S. intelligence agencies have said were probably used as mobile biological weapons labs, said U.S. forces in Iraq have "found the weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States&#39; primary justification for going to war.

http://www.vintage-vacations.com/many-trailers-1.gif

Well, they are clearly up to something&#33;

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Originally posted by clocker@31 May 2003 - 17:38
Well, they are clearly up to something&#33;

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indeed, the one in the bottom left hand corner looks particularly menacing...it must be the roving nuclear lab. and the one right beside it? fat man.

I just don&#39;t see how any reasonably intelligent analytical thinker could fail to be convinced by such evidence.

Don&#39;t need to show me any more. ;)

as far as i&#39;m concerned, any Bush defender worth his weight in oil stocks simply can&#39;t ignore the commentary of joshua marshall. he has written several important pieces on iraq this year, and while his daily musings probably were a little hysterical just before the war started, his analysis is overwhelming first rate. for an intelligent, reasonable Democratic perspective, check: www.talkingpointsmemo.com which is updated several times a week.

j2, this is what i call good bias, in the sense that he certainly has an agenda, but has a high degree of journalistic integrity, and knows his stuff inside out.

from talkingpointmemos.com:

(June 1st, 2003 -- 11:46 PM EDT // link)
My God, when they say down the memory hole, they ain&#39;t kiddin&#33; There now seems to be a secret competition -- perhaps it was announced and I just didn&#39;t hear it -- for the Iraq-hawk who can come up with the most ingenious, Orwellian, up-is-down rewriting of the history of the year-long lead-up to the Iraq war. To this point, the strongest entries are those whispers out of the Pentagon, arguing that it was Colin Powell and the State Department who made them make such a big to-do about weapons of mass destruction.

I take my hat off to those folks. That was a pretty solid entry. But when it comes to disingenuous agitprop you just never want to count Bill Safire out. And the old master comes in with a rock-solid entry in Monday morning&#39;s column.

Safire begins by asking what the greatest intelligence failure of the war was? Something to do with WMD? Not at all. "It was the nearly unanimous opinion of the intelligence community, backed by the U.S. and British military, that the 50,000 elite soldiers of Saddam&#39;s well-trained, well-equipped Special Republican Guard would put up a fierce battle for Baghdad."

This is true to a limited extent -- though the guys in uniform -- i.e., the ones who actually fight wars -- would argue that their aim was to make sure they weren&#39;t undergunned if the Republican Guard did fight to the death.

But the contest entry comes next ...

Happily, our best assessment was mistaken. Saddam&#39;s supposed diehards cut and ran. Though Baghdad&#39;s power and water were cut off, civilians were spared and our losses were even fewer than in Gulf War I.
What if our planners had believed Kurdish leaders who predicted that Saddam&#39;s super-loyalists would quickly collapse? We would have sent fewer combat troops and more engineers, civilian administrators and military police. But the C.I.A. and the Pentagon had no way of being certain that the information about the Republican Guard&#39;s poor morale and weak discipline provided by Kurds and Iraqi opposition leaders was accurate.

In other words, the lack of preparation for post-war reconstruction and the shortage of nation-builders is the fault of the CIA and the Joint Staff&#33; If Tommy Franks and Eric Shinseki and the rest of them hadn&#39;t been such whiners, Doug Feith would have been able to flood the place with MPs, bridge builders, Arabic-speakers and a whole tribe of Jerry Bremer clones&#33; Who knew&#33;
I think Safire is going to run away with this one.

-- Josh Marshall

and besides, if it wasn&#39;t for scottish wars, we never woulda had the chance to get bored while watching braveheart&#33;

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myfiles3000 quoted a Washington Post story:

KRAKOW, Poland, May 30 -- President Bush, citing two trailers that U.S. intelligence agencies have said were probably used as mobile biological weapons labs, said U.S. forces in Iraq have "found the weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States&#39; primary justification for going to war.

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Yup, pretty flimsy. And yet, I&#39;m a bit amazed at the current media hoopla on Bush/Blair ... with everyone lambasting them because no WMD have been found. Imagine if we&#39;d sent astronauts to the moon and, a third of the way there, the media is yelling, "Hey, where&#39;s that moon landing you promised?" There are 900 sites (at least) to be checked ... and only 200-300 of them have been checked so far. And, it only takes ONE find out of those remaining 600-700 sites to make a lot of people start eating crow.

True, it&#39;s possible that no WMD will ever be discovered. But frankly, the media is behaving like a bunch of children on vacation, taunting their parents in the front seat with:

http://novelhost.net/arewethereyet.gif

I guess "patience is a virtue" is an unknown axiom to the world of journalism.

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Originally posted by OlderThanDirt@3 June 2003 - 18:31


I guess "patience is a virtue" is an unknown axiom to the world of journalism.

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And a suitable waiting period before the question can be reasonably asked would be?
If you insist on performing slight-of-hand with the facts doesn&#39;t the audience have a valid expectation of a payoff?
We sat through the lead-in.
We got the razzle dazzle.
We were shocked and awed.
Now show us the rabbit.

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Originally posted by OlderThanDirt@4 June 2003 - 01:31
...True, it&#39;s possible that no WMD will ever be discovered. But frankly, the media is behaving like a bunch of children on vacation...

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I doubt that there&#39;d be so much carping about the non-existance of the WMD if the US hadn&#39;t based its entire reason to invade Iraq on the very concrete evidence that Saddam Hussein had these WMD.

:ninja:

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clocker wrote:

And a suitable waiting period before the question can be reasonably asked would be?

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At least as long as America&#39;s detractors were willing to wait for Hans Blix to complete the same job.

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MagicNakor wrote:

I doubt that there&#39;d be so much carping about the non-existance of the WMD if the US hadn&#39;t based its entire reason to invade Iraq on the very concrete evidence that Saddam Hussein had these WMD.

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Well, as I told clocker in another forum, I&#39;m glad we went in ... but sad we went in for THAT reason.

i&#39;ve never heard the 300 of 900 sites figure before, but it sounds at the very least like spin to me. in any event, they have 2000 special forces soldiers on the ground for nearly 8 weeks now without a thing. just how long do they need, given the supposedly overwhelming evidence? plus the satellite imagery and on-ground intelligence? wouldn&#39;t there be ONE former insider that would blow the whistle? i&#39;m sure the coalition is waving all kinds of carrots around for any snitches willing to come forward...h

Does asking the question "Where are the WMD" automatically make one a "
detractor"?

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clocker wrote:

Does asking the question "Where are the WMD" automatically make one a "detractor"?

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Nope. Didn&#39;t say that. Just saying that what we&#39;re witnessing now is a turnabout. The US was lambasted for not giving Blix more time ... and now is being lambasted by those unwilling to give us the same amount of time they were willing to give Blix.

The difference being of course, that Blix wasn&#39;t firing 750 Tomahawk missiles into Iraq, nor putting thousands of troops on the ground.
We invaded on the premise that not only did these weapons exist but that they posed a clear and present danger not only to us, but the world.
So I&#39;ll wait a week.
But I wanna see the rabbit soon.

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Originally posted by OlderThanDirt@4 June 2003 - 02:26

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clocker wrote:

Does asking the question "Where are the WMD" automatically make one a "detractor"?

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Nope. Didn&#39;t say that. Just saying that what we&#39;re witnessing now is a turnabout. The US was lambasted for not giving Blix more time ... and now is being lambasted by those unwilling to give us the same amount of time they were willing to give Blix.

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apples and oranges. you suck.

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myfiles3000 wrote:

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(OlderThanDirt @ 4 June 2003 - 02:26)

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&nbsp;
clocker wrote:

Does asking the question "Where are the WMD" automatically make one a "detractor"?

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Nope. Didn&#39;t say that. Just saying that what we&#39;re witnessing now is a turnabout. The US was lambasted for not giving Blix more time ... and now is being lambasted by those unwilling to give us the same amount of time they were willing to give Blix.

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apples and oranges.

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Actually, your correct. Comparing the two inspection attempts is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Blix&#39;s people weren&#39;t being shot at while they searched.

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you suck.

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Ahhh, yes. It&#39;s great to come here for such intellectual foreplay.

new york times
June 4, 2003
Because We Could
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


he failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.&#39;s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it&#39;s the wrong issue now.

Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn&#39;t enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there — a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don&#39;t believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen — got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

The "right reason" for this war was the need to partner with Iraqis, post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab regime. Because the real weapons of mass destruction that threaten us were never Saddam&#39;s missiles. The real weapons that threaten us are the growing number of angry, humiliated young Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by failed or failing Arab states — young people who hate America more than they love life. Helping to build a decent Iraq as a model for others — and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — are the necessary steps for defusing the ideas of mass destruction, which are what really threaten us.

The "moral reason" for the war was that Saddam&#39;s regime was an engine of mass destruction and genocide that had killed thousands of his own people, and neighbors, and needed to be stopped.

But because the Bush team never dared to spell out the real reason for the war, and (wrongly) felt that it could never win public or world support for the right reasons and the moral reasons, it opted for the stated reason: the notion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to America. I argued before the war that Saddam posed no such threat to America, and had no links with Al Qaeda, and that we couldn&#39;t take the nation to war "on the wings of a lie." I argued that Mr. Bush should fight this war for the right reasons and the moral reasons. But he stuck with this W.M.D. argument for P.R. reasons.

Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of Saddam&#39;s genocidal evil, my view was that Mr. Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.&#39;s to justify the war for me. I still feel that way. But I have to admit that I&#39;ve always been fighting my own war in Iraq. Mr. Bush took the country into his war. And if it turns out that he fabricated the evidence for his war (which I wouldn&#39;t conclude yet), that would badly damage America and be a very serious matter.

But my ultimate point is this: Finding Iraq&#39;s W.M.D.&#39;s is necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush team, the neocons, Tony Blair and the C.I.A. But rebuilding Iraq is necessary to win the war. I won&#39;t feel one whit more secure if we find Saddam&#39;s W.M.D.&#39;s, because I never felt he would use them on us. But I will feel terribly insecure if we fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. Because if that doesn&#39;t happen, the terrorism bubble will reinflate and bad things will follow. Mr. Bush&#39;s credibility rides on finding W.M.D.&#39;s, but America&#39;s future, and the future of the Mideast, rides on our building a different Iraq. We must not forget that.

NYT
June 4, 2003
Bomb and Switch
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

Before 9/11, the administration had too little intelligence on Al Qaeda, badly coordinated by clashing officials.

Before the Iraq invasion, the administration had too much intelligence on Saddam, torqued up by conspiring officials.

As Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to make his case for invading Iraq to the U.N. on Feb. 5, a friend of his told me, he had to throw out a couple of hours&#39; worth of sketchy intelligence other Bush officials were trying to stuff into his speech.

U.S. News & World Report reveals this week that when Mr. Powell was rehearsing the case with two dozen officials, he became so frustrated by the dubious intelligence about Saddam that he tossed several pages in the air and declared: "I&#39;m not reading this. This is &#036;%&*#."

First America has no intelligence. Then it has &#036;%&*# intelligence.

So this is progress?

For the first time in history, America is searching for the reason we went to war after the war is over.

As The Times&#39;s James Risen reports, a bedrock of the administration&#39;s weapons case — the National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nukes — is itself being reassessed. The document is at the center of a broad prewar-intelligence review, being conducted by the C.I.A. to see whether the weapons evidence was cooked.

Conservatives are busily offering a bouquet of new justifications for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq that was sold as self-defense against Saddam&#39;s poised and thrumming weapons of mass destruction.

Pressed by reporters about whether Tony Blair and President Bush were guilty of hyperbole — Mr. Blair&#39;s foreign secretary claimed Saddam could deploy chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes — Senator John McCain replied, "The American people support what the president did, whether we find those weapons or not, and they did so the day they saw 9- and 10-year-old boys coming out of a prison in Baghdad."

Senator Pete Domenici noted that experts thought that Saddam&#39;s overthrow might pave the way for the Middle East road map to work. "For those kind of experts to say that has changed the dynamics in the Middle East, sufficient that we might get peace, seems to me to outweigh all the questions about did we have every bit of evidence that we say we had or not," he said.

In a Vanity Fair interview, Paul Wolfowitz said another "almost unnoticed but huge" reason for war was to promote Middle East peace by allowing the U.S. to take its troops out of Saudi Arabia — Osama&#39;s bête noir. But it was after the U.S. announced it would pull its troops from Saudi Arabia that a resurgent Qaeda struck a Western compound, killing eight Americans.

And it was after the U.S. tried to intimidate other foes by stomping on Saddam that Iran and North Korea ratcheted up their nukes. Iran and North Korea actually do have scary nuclear programs, but if we express our alarm to the world now, will we be accused of crying Wolfowitz?

A new Pew survey of 21 nations shows a deepening skepticism toward the U.S. "The war had widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism, and significantly weakened global public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era — the U.N. and the North Atlantic alliance," said Pew&#39;s director, Andrew Kohut.

Brits may be more upset with Mr. Blair than Americans are with Mr. Bush because they have the quaint idea that even if you think war was a good idea, you should level with the public about your objectives.

The Bush crowd practiced bait and switch, leaving many Americans with the impression that Saddam was involved in 9/11.

When James Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director and current Pentagon adviser, appeared on "Nightline" five days after 9/11 and suggested that America had to strike Iraq for sponsoring terrorism, Ted Koppel rebutted: "Nobody right now is suggesting that Iraq had anything to do with this. In fact, quite the contrary."

Mr. Woolsey replied: "I don&#39;t think it matters. I don&#39;t think it matters." The Republicans will have to follow the maxim of Robert Moses, the autocratic New York builder who never let public opinion get in the way of his bulldozing: "If the ends don&#39;t justify the means, what does?"

I love it Myfiles, just love it.
Really.

Now, should things go as they normally do, I fully expect the posts to follow will include statements such as: " Maureen Dowd has a leftist agenda&#33;" and "Freidman works for the NY Times and you can&#39;t trust them&#33;".

Tar the messenger and ignore the message. ;)

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Originally posted by clocker@4 June 2003 - 09:13
I love it Myfiles, just love it.
Really.

Now, should things go as they normally do, I fully expect the posts to follow will include statements such as: " Maureen Dowd has a leftist agenda&#33;" and "Freidman works for the NY Times and you can&#39;t trust them&#33;".

Tar the messenger and ignore the message. ;)

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Some would say of the N.Y. Times "That&#39;s not ink, it&#39;s tar&#33;"

They are occasionally correct. The Times built it&#39;s reputation on factual accuracy, not the cant or quality of it&#39;s SPIN.

Thank you for posting those articles, myfiles3000. I especially liked the article by Thomas L. Friedman since I&#39;m a fan of his. His "Longitudes And Attitudes" is an excellent book. As I told clocker earlier, I was glad we went into Iraq ... but sad we went in for the reason we did. As Friedman so eloquently put it, we should have used the "moral" reason. Had we first gone to the UN to demand they enforce Resolution 688 ... and if the UN chose instead to sit on their laurels ... we could have gone in with our heads held high as liberators. And, we may have even had French soldiers in the field with us considering what their own human rights organizations reported about Iraq (click here). As Friedman said, "Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of Saddam&#39;s genocidal evil, my view was that Mr. Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.&#39;s to justify the war for me. I still feel that way."

However, Mr. Friedman has not yet concluded that no W.M.D.&#39;s can be found in Iraq -- only saying that, to him, it wouldn&#39;t make him feel more secure if we did find them. But, he and I are on an identical wavelength about one thing ... that someone, sometime is going to be eating crow (Bush, et al, if they aren&#39;t found -- his critics, if they are found).

BTW, somewhere in my VCD archives (I archive news and documentary programs), I have a program where Friedman is in the Middle-East, asking people for their perceptions of America ... but also asking people for their perceptions of their own countries. In one part of this program, he&#39;s talking with 3 or 4 college students. One of them complains about US interference in the region. But Friedman defends US presence and says, quote, "If there isn&#39;t a war within cultures, there will be a war between cultures," suggesting that people living in the Middle East have to take the ultimate responsibility for their own leaders and their policies ... and that if they don&#39;t, US "interference" shouldn&#39;t come as a surprise to them.

Anyhoo, thanks again for posting the article. Reading Friedman is such a joy.

(now engaging tongue-in-cheek mode)

I work graveyard shift. Last night on my first break, I went out to my car and turned on the radio -- to hear the "Coast To Coast" show with George Noory (Art Bell&#39;s woo-woo successor). And on that show, I heard the most bizarre reason I&#39;ve ever heard for our intervention in Iraq. Noory was talking about a previous guest on his show who&#39;d said that neither oil nor WMD was the real reason we went into Iraq. The real reason? Because our intelligence people discovered that Saddam Hussein may have been in possession of a (ahem) "Stargate" ... and we wanted it.

Here are the particulars on this bizarre theory.

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Originally posted by j2k4@4 June 2003 - 08:21

Some would say of the N.Y. Times "That&#39;s not ink, it&#39;s tar&#33;"

They are occasionally correct. The Times built it&#39;s reputation on factual accuracy, not the cant or quality of it&#39;s SPIN.

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Ah,j2, this is exactly what I was talking about.
The column is obviously a "opinion" piece and questioning the spin of the publisher doesn&#39;t really address the validity of the opinion expressed, does it?

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j2k4 wrote:

They are occasionally correct. The Times built it&#39;s reputation on factual accuracy, not the cant or quality of it&#39;s SPIN.

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Sorry, but in this case I have to side with myfiles3000 and clocker. Thomas L. Friedman is a Middle East scholar whose reputation and insight (just my opinion) are beyond question. However, I do understand where you&#39;re coming from. The reputation of the Times will take some time to heal after the Jayson Blair debacle. But in the end, I think the Times will prevail and be far tougher on their journalists about adhering to the straight and narrow.

I still don&#39;t see what the spin/cant/believability of the Times has to do with an "opinion" published therein.

You certainly don&#39;t have to agree/believe with the paper to respond to a op-ed piece.