This passes as sophisticated foreign policy analysis in the New York Times. Here Friedman quotes his close friend (really): "As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names." Of course, Iraqi insurgents have not right to Iraq's oil. US Empire, however, has every right.