I am not alone in noticing how unbearable Thomas Friedman has been since 9-11, increasingly and astonishingly so.

That is why his newest column really stands out.

For one, he did not feel compelled to make up a cute name for some phenomenon, a stupid trait that he shares with the always-unbearable Maureen Dowd.

Instead, Friedman wrote a solid column about the ridiculousness of the situaiton in Iraq where our soldieres are fighting and dying while the Iraqi political leaders go on vacation. Friedman also makes a great point: send the US diplomats in to solve the mess one of three ways:

1. Make the necessary compromises to get the oil sharing deal solved so the political situation can revolve itself

2. realized that #1 can't be achieved and draw up a partition plan that will be implemented by international aid (my personal choice)

3. Tell the Iraqis that if neither 1 or 2 works we will leave and let them sort it out (i.e. have a civil war)

I would select the text of the column but of course the greedy bastards at the NYTimes lock up their information behind Times Select, so no dice. But here is the link if you do have access.