Seriously?

"Whenever people asked me how I’d know if we’d won in Iraq," writes Tom Friedman, "I said: when Salman Rushdie could give a lecture in Baghdad."

Really? That was his criterion for victory? And he thought the war was a good idea? And he's the country's most-influential foreign affairs columnist? I'd best just stop reading things. Picked up (or, rather, stole from my roommate) White Noise on the advice of commenters -- that's a much more palatable brand of surrealism.