then of course there is the book-promotion-mill that the NY Times has become with all of its reporters/for its reporters.

My own view is that his persona (the one he's using, anyway) is that of an effusive golden retriever. Lots of wag and schlurp, but doesn't growl and get angry/barky.

Some people like that.

He's just another of the Times reporters who, although associated with a publisher (and a really ugly building) in Manhattan, still somehow don't know that The Salomon Building, 7 WTC, or WTC #7, also was demolished in 9/11/2001.

I think of that every time I see a nice poster sized pix of one of the twin towers been blown out--an EXplosive demolition, designed for spectacular (be afraid, be very afraid) effect--maximum terror--whereas the normal, ordinary IMplosion of WTC #7 was really just a demolition-without-a-permit.

Suire, they didn't get the asbestos permit on #1, 2 or 7, but what the hay, are you going to cite Silverstein for failing to get a demolition permit on a day when 2,780-odd citizens got murdered? Hell, that's just a minor administrative detail on a day meant to frighten an entire nation (world, for that matter--just think of it, the biggest, most powerful nation in the world, the best protected, best-jetted, best missiled nation in the world couldn't even protect its own east coast.

Pretty terrifying, no? (Not to mention that the nation had obviously wasted all of its investments in the military-industrial-complex, because it couldn't even blow four lumbering commercial passenger airlines out of the sky when it had at least 40 minutes' notice.

And how's that for a nation really taken to the cleaners for so-called "defense spending"!! Daddy, daddy, the Emperor has no jets!!!

Shenon's book doesn't mention WTC #7, for example. I haven't bothered to read any of Friedman's potboilers.