Politics

McCain calls out NYT’s Friedman on Iraq, Afghanistan

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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On Fox Business Network’s Thursday broadcast of the “Imus in the Morning” program, Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain blasted New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on his past columns on Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I admire Mr. Friedman,” he continued. “I would point out he was dead wrong about Iraq. Said we couldn’t win, said we had to get out. Sometimes it might be nice to hear people like Mr. Friedman who were wrong about Iraq and are now wrong about Afghanistan admit that they were wrong.”

In an August 4, 2006 column, Friedman threw in the towel on Iraq, writing, “It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.” Friedman has also been critical about the current policy in Afghanistan.

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However, the Arizona senator did say he agreed with some of what Friedman had written about domestic energy policy.

“Well, he’s — his columns are widely read and he’s highly regarded and he’s been very good for a long period of time on energy issues and our– a lot of the things he has to say about how we can eliminate our dependency on foreign oil and a lot of the things he’s been very good on,” McCain said. “And by the way, when you see the price of oil now going up over $90 a barrel, my friend, the implications of that are quite extraordinary to the average citizen.”