A follow up to my blog from yesterday. I closed that entry wondering if Saudi shill Chas Freeman could weather the storm. He couldn't, and the intelligence community--and America--are better for it. From CBN News (click on the viewer to watch my analysis of the Freeman fiasco):
WASHINGTON - A former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia resigned Tuesday from his new post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council following congressional criticism for comments about the Israeli government and alleged ties to foreign governments.
Charles Freeman's resignation came just hours after National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said at a Senate hearing that he was standing behind his appointment of Freeman as chairman of the council, which analyzes national security issues. Freeman had not yet begun his work as chairman, and Blair said he accepted the resignation "with regret."
The National Intelligence Council draws information and analysis from all U.S. intelligence agencies to produce national intelligence estimates. NIE's are the intelligence agencies' most comprehensive statements and are meant to be unvarnished and apolitical.
Freeman has aggressively criticized the Israeli government, the war in Iraq and the war on terror. In the last two weeks almost three dozen lawmakers, primarily Republicans, have questioned his ability to be objective in his analysis.
Freeman's financial, personal and business ties with the governments of China and Saudi Arabia have also been called into account. He was president of the Middle East Policy Council, which received some funding from the Saudi government, and he is on the international board of advisers to a Chinese-government owned oil company.
Predictably, Freeman has issued a statement blaming--you guessed it--the Jews.
I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.
Hmmmm. I wonder who he means?
The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.
The larger--and more troubling--question is why the Obama administration would nominate someone with Freeman's views and associations in the first place. Not that the mainstream media noticed.