clipped from: www.msnbc.msn.com   

MR. FRIEDMAN: I’m not sure anymore, you know, is the real problem. When, when I look at the Iraqi factions today, it seems to me, Tim, they want—democracy, that’s not their first choice, they want justice. They want justice before democracy. The Shiites want justice for the last 30 years. The Kurds want justice. The Sunnis want justice for a war that overturned their, their dominance. My, my fear about Iraq right now and the reason I wrote that column is that I get the sense, Tim, that our vision of Iraq, a democratic, or democratizing pluralistic Iraq, is everyone’s second choice there, all right? Their first choice is a Shia theocracy in the south, a Sunni return to power, an independent Kurdistan. And we cannot go on having our first-choice boys and girls dying for Iraqis’ second choice.