"WE'VE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA"

(Via Atrios)

The wingnuts need an external enemy to maintain ideological discipline and little Tommy Friedman helps them out. Glenzilla goes over Tommy's positions on the Middle East and confirms for us that Friedman is a hack. You may have heard the wingnut meme that we've been at war with Iran since 1979. Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report points out that this argument has serious implications for St. Raygun's legacy:

But the best response came from my friend, the Anonymous Liberal.

[I]f we’ve been at war with Iran since 1979, then President Reagan, then-Vice President Bush, and the rest of the Reagan administration are necessarily guilty of high treason. During the Iran-Contra affair, they illegally sold arms to Iran (via Israel), including thousands of BGM-71 TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles. Iran subsequently reverse-engineered these missiles and now produces its own version, called the Toophan, which Hezbollah reportedly used against Israeli tanks in the recent conflict in Lebanon. If we were “at war” with Iran at the time of these arms sales, is there any non-treasonous interpretation of this conduct?

The conservatives don't have a real set of principles aside from cutting taxes so I think we need to hammer away about how inconsistent they are on almost any other issue.