Sorry, I think this kind of encounter is totally -- non-productive and childish. On both sides. Seeing as we're all still in Molly memory space, imagine this encounter taking place between her and Friedman. First of all, she'd probably recognize that over his life time Friedman's been good on most of the things we care about, but yes, he was horribly wrong on the invasion. She'd probably also recognize that unlike so many of my once-fave Dems, he cops to that now. And she'd certainly recognize that a silly little swipe like "nice job on that war" wasn't worth uttering. She was too smart for that. I'm trying to imagine what she would have said in her inimitable backwoods Texan way, probably something having to do with pigs and a swamp, but l wouldn't presume to go there.
We all can think of times when we've been dead wrong on something, though there's not much excuse for being dead wrong on this war. Still, as much as Friedman let us down, at least it was his opinion he was writing, unlike justifyin' Judy (Miller) who wrote her Chalabi-fed lies as facts. And you can follow that trail up to the top of the Times and the other complacent and cowed media that paved the oily road to war.
But ultimately, no matter how much the media failed to do their job and how much Friedman blindly bought in, it seems to me we should reserve our rage, and even our petulant comments, for those who purposely and methodically cooked up this batch of lies and plunged us all -- and I include most of the world in that "all" -- into this unending nightmare of misery, violence and death. I mean, pick your enemies. When we "peons" are all sniping at each other, Darth Vader and the Decider are very happy.
Molly said something to the effect of "It's serious stuff but remember to have fun doing it." It seems to me that's something that both "Brenden", the insulter, and Friedman, the insultee, need to work on.

re: comments to Friedman being inappropriate - nah,
Friedman wrote about the war like it was a crap game i.e. Bush is rolling the dice, well, 650,000 deaths later a little discourtesy towards his bizarre war mongering are all too appropriate. Re: "non-productive and childing", 650,000 LIVES and hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars later and it's the words your worried about. Please call Friedman, Bush, Cheney and any of the other delusional idiots what they are. I know from reading his crap writing that his wife knew what a sham this whole fabricated war was / is. Yet he continued sucking up to power and now needs to face up to the consequences.

Well, okay. I knew I was being a prig on this one, and I guess you can call him anything you want. I tend to be idiotically loyal, as in, still want to believe that JFK was a prince despite all evidence to the contrary. But I loved it when Paul Wellstone spoke truth to power and I loved Jim Webb's salvo to Bush's gratuitous little "how's your boy?" smirk. So I guess it's not the words I'm quibbling with, it's choosing the right targets. Seems we are all exhausted by this nightmare of endless death and we need to save all our energy and verbal ammo (sorry) for bringing down the Bush/Cheney empire. Friedman, dead wrong in every sense at the front end of this war, is a bit player. For whatever reason, he bought into the lies and did his part, and though he hasn't apologized, he's certainly changed his tune. So did Jack Murtha and John Warner and a score of others who are now leading the efforts to block Bush and stop the killing. I think we need everyone to band together now, despite whatever insanity they once bought in to. So insulting Tom Friedman on the street may be personally gratifying, but it doesn't bring us one step closer to ending the war.

Susan,

I don't think Friedman and the NY Times, especially Judith Miller, were bit players in the lead up to the war. Judith Miller was one of the main journalists that participated in the sham news stories where they feed each other information and than quote the anonymus administration official or the NY Times, whichever serves their purpose.

Anyone who participated in the kinds of lies that led our country into this miserable war should be held to account in the starkest of terms including criminal investigations.

I don't have any respect for the Democrats who invite Bush to come talk like a hillbilly to them while they applaud and laugh at his self depreciating remarks. He is a war criminal with the responsibility of close to a million deaths. That puts him in a pretty elite class of historical figures. The people that do not get called to account for their actions continue to haunt us for years. People like Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and yes sychophants in the press like Bob Novak and now people like Tom Friedman.

Paul,
I totally agree on Judith Miller, who spewed the lies all over the front pages of the Times and fought for the right to do it. As I wrote in the Star Tribune in June, 2003, before Judy's public demise,

Chalabi also found a receptive audience at the New York Times, where two Pulitzer Prize-winning senior staff squabbled recently over who had the rights to run an interview with him. In a leaked internal New York Times e-mail, reported by the Washington Post, reporter Judith Miller wrote to Baghdad bureau chief John Burns that she had cultivated a long-term relationship with Chalabi. "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years and have done most of the stories about him for our paper, including the long takeout that we recently did on him. He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."

Yet Miller's reliance on the toadying Chalabi for front-page exclusives at the scandal-plagued Times and her alleged triangulation with the Pentagon has gone largely unreported and unchallenged. Talk about a "chorus of agreeability."

You can click the link to read the whole piece, and I hope you will.

I don't have as big a problem with Friedman because he wasn't pretending to report news, he was giving his opinion, one he now regrets. Compared to Judy and the rest of the Times, as well as most of the MSM, I do think he was a bit player. And I admire other things he's written and so I'm not as willing to lump him with the others or waste much of our precious vitriol on him. (Speaking of, there's a cartoon in the current New Yorker in which a car salesman is touting the latest model that runs on vitriol. Now that's a car I could get some mileage on.)

As for jivin' humble George going all squishy-huggy for the Dems, now that his team is abandoning him or heading to prison and the Dems hold the power, it's just more sickening frosting on the already nauseating cake. And I agree that their fanny kissing is also revolting, but I didn't realize they invited him. Did they? Or does he just sort of appear where ever his handlers think it will help him?
No matter, they should have declined to let him speak, unless they were prepared to greet him with a hot pot of tar. I couldn't agree with you more that he -- and Cheney and Rummy and Condi and Wolfie and Perley are all war criminals and should be tried. Novak too, and while we're at it, Fox news and Judy Miller and . . . oh yeah, how come Ahmed Chalabi is still walking this planet?
But I just can't work up the same lather about Friedman, sorry.