Maureen Dowd thinks that the C.I.A. was suckered by Chalabi:
Certainly the C.I.A. has a lot to answer for. For a bargain price of $30 billion a year, our intelligence aces have been spectacularly off. They failed to warn us about 9/11 and missed the shame spiral of a deranged Saddam, hoodwinked by his top scientists.They were probably relying too much on the Arabian Nights tales of Ahmad Chalabi, eager to spread the word of Saddam’s imaginary nuclear-tipped weapons juggernaut because it suited his own ambitions – and that of his Pentagon pals.
That’s a really stupid thing to say. I understand that Dowd has a lot to keep up with, being a pop culture maven and all, but is it too much to ask that she refrain from writing about politics until she’s got a basic grasp of the players and their positions? (Chalabi was widely detested in the C.I.A.)
Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman writes another puff-piece with this gem:
Since Davos gathers together a sample of global leaders, business executives and social activists, it’s a good place to take the world’s pulse.
Your world, Tom, your world.
And now for a little rant:
Abolish tenure at the New York Times editorial page! Abolish it now! Dump Dowd! Dump Safire! Dump Friedman! Dump (the well-intentioned, but very boring) Herbert! And dump that jackass Brooks on the sidewalk without cabfare home!
Why does the Times editorial page infuriate me so? I realized the other day that it’s not just that its influence is undeserved. The main thing is not that it’s bad, but that it is so unnecessarily bad.
There are very few people who would turn down the opportunity to write for the OpEd page of the New York Times. Money isn’t an issue. It may be unearned, but the OpEd page has prestige that basically makes money no object. And so the Times can have anyone they want. Anyone.
That means that those who call the shots either a) believe that the NYTimes OpEd page has a tenure policy which ties their hands; or b) are so stupid that Thomas Friedman is the best person they can think of in the whole world to write about foreign policy (and so on and on and on).
Just think about that: The best. They can think of. In the whole world.
The mediocrity of the Times page is a wholly voluntary matter, a gory, self-inflicted wound whose remedy is a few hours on the phone hiring and firing the right people.
Abolish tenure at the New York Times! Abolish it now!
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