Either I start getting more oral sex or they'll be more wars. (Photo by Charles Haynes.)

There are those moments when you hear a talking head on TV say something so stupendously wrong-minded that it’s stunning. Since most of cable news is aimed at attention-grabbing shock, it’s not easy to stand out as colossal bonehead, but it happens occasionally.

I thought of one such occasion today when I read Thomas Friedman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times. He uses the column to try to convince readers that he was in favor of the Iraq War because he hoped it would bring about democracy in that nation, one that would be supported and sustained by Iraqis themselves.

But Friedman had a very different rationale in 2003 for his loud urging of an American invasion. That was when the columnist and best-selling author guested on the Charlie Rose Show to explain why the U.S. needed to go to war. The comments still stand out to me for their irrationality, immaturity and immorality. Every time Friedman tries to revise his reasons for being an Iraq War cheerleader, these statements should be brought up. An excerpt:

“We needed to go over there, basically take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying, ‘Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?’ You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.

We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth.”