Thomas Friedman. The name is synonymous with a special kind of arrogance. A man who thought he was smarter than everyone else. Maybe the complete and utter failure of his vision has given him new insight:
George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they do.
They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry -- a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service -- and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.
Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because they surely do.
More below.
Yeah, I'm sick and tired of this story, manufactured by GOP and happily carried and embellished by the media.
But it is significant, that the number one cheerleader for the war -- Tom Friedman -- the man who could barely wait to start killing Iraqis (in order to save them) uses that same war to tell Bushco that their time is up.
What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld's response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you've got -- get over it.
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Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. ... His "genius" is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.
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Let Karl know that you're not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has -- through sheer incompetence -- brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.
Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq -- and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate -- it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.
It means we're as stupid as Karl thinks we are.
I, for one, don't think we're that stupid. Next Tuesday we'll see.
I don't like Tom Friedman. Not because he supported the war, but why and how, and for how long. But you deserve to read what he wrote. So, I will step aside.
