Rosen’s initial posting was the first of 17 he would write about Freeman over a 19-day period. Some of those added more original reporting, while some pointed to other blogs’ finds about Freeman’s record. In the process, Rosen traced increasing interest in the appointment elsewhere in the blogosphere, including coverage by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard, and Chait and Martin Peretz of the New Republic.

Today, Pincus confirmed that Freeman was, indeed, correct in Mideast Press Questions Obama:

The Middle East press has questioned President Obama’s authority over Arab-Israeli issues since Charles W. Freeman Jr.’s withdrawal from his appointment to a senior intelligence position.

A commentary in Abu Dhabi’s the National, a newspaper owned by an investment fund controlled by the government, said Freeman’s decision Tuesday to withdraw as chairman of the National Intelligence Council “threw the Obama administration into the heart of a long-running controversy over the alleged supremacy of pro-Israel hawks in determining U.S. foreign policy after having taken a cautious approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so far consistent with previous administrations.”

The Daily Star in Beirut went further, saying Freeman’s action “is likely to be viewed as a significant victory for hardliners within the so-called ‘Israeli lobby,’ who led the movement to scuttle his appointment, and a blow to hopes for a new approach to Israel-Palestine issues under the Obama administration.”

Pincus also quotes from a Saudi news source, that was upset over the scuttling of the appointment.

To his credit, I suppose, Pincus quotes Caroline Glick at the end of his article. (Glick unfortunately misidentifies Doug Jehl as being an editor of the Washington Post; he’s an editor of the New York Times. And the e-mail was sent to Greg Sargent not to Michael Goldfarb. And I don’t doubt that the Washington Post viewed things exactly as Jehl did. Still, for the purpose of accuracy, it would be preferable if she were more careful.)

Still Pincus’s report today seems to be a way of justifying his previous outing on the topic of Freeman’s withdrawn nomination. The recklessness that Pincus tries to justify does have costs. I found a different Saudi online publication that asserted:

“President Barack Obama is swimming against the tide,” said Khaled Batarfi, a senior political analyst. “He will have to keep trying to get his men in the positions that he want them to. Obama would have faced similar problems if his choice of Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell had gone through US Congress. Mitchell would have lost in getting the US Congress approval. Despite being a Democratic Congress we know it is actually an Israeli Congress.”

Actually, like Mitchell, Freeman’s appointment did not have to be confirmed by the Senate. Freeman withdrew on his own.

I wasn’t the only one to notice this. Jennifer Rubin is amazed that there’s better reporting going on at the Post’s editorial pages than at its news pages. (via memeorandum)

This is odd in the extreme. The Post reports on the Freeman debacle in the Opinion pages. The “news” reporter accepts and promotes the unsubstantiated Arab Lobby view of Freeman and the influence of the Jews. Pincus could have followed the factual trail neatly handed him by Frank Wolf and Charles Lane’s pieces. But no, his beat is apparently the Arab Lobby and he does a fine job of presenting their views.

But it is nice to know how in sync the Left blogosphere is with the House of Saud.

Not just the Left blogosphere, the MSM too. (Rubin links to the Wolf and Lane columns here.)

It’s worth pointing out that in its first weeks in power, the Obama administration had done things like engage the planners of the Durban II conference and promised $900 million for rebuilding Gaza. Even though the administration did pull out of the Durban II planning when it became that the organizers were not signifcantly more fair-minded than a lynch mob, Anne Bayefsky, who’s watched the spectacle unfold, still thinks that the administration hurt Israel by its ill-fated effort to reach out. And as Representative Mark Kirk observed, if even 10% of the money gets through to Hamas – not an unlikely event – despite American controls, that means that American taxpayers will be funding the terrorist organization to the tune of $90 million. They can buy plenty of Qassams with that.

So in three major issues, the omnipotent Israel lobby has apparently prevailed once. (And I’m not convinced that it was the Israel lobby that made the difference in Freeman’s withdrawal. I think it was the IG’s investigation.) Batting .333 is not what you’d expect from a powerful lobby. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people, including supposedly objective reporters, who seem willing to peddle the myth.

UPDATE: JudeoPundit nails it! Michael Goldfarb comes up with a nice conclusion:

Makes you wonder why Pincus didn’t just go straight to Duke rather than risk having his quotes garbled in translation from the original Arabic.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

We did initially elect not to write a story about the campaign against Mr. Freeman. In deciding how to deploy our reporters, my initial judgment was that this squabble fell short of the bar, since the head of the National Intelligence Council is not a Senate-confirmable position and it lies well below cabinet rank.

But the fact that the campaign proved successful certainly justified Mark Mazzetti’s story in this morning’s paper, and we are continuing our reporting efforts today.

NYT editor, Doug Jehl on the decision not to cover the appointment of Chas Freeman to head the NIC as reported by Greg Sargent.

Notice Jehl’s premise: the story wasn’t whether Chas Freeman was right for the job or had too much baggage, it’s the campaign against him. That’s why the Gray Lady didn’t cover Freeman’s appointment until he withdrew from consideration, its editors (and reporters) saw nothing wrong with the appointment, so it was a non-story. And that’s why when it covered the aftermath of the withdrawal the headline (and story) might well have been written by Freeman himself.

The result of this misplaced focus as Jamie Kirchick and Jennifer Rubin observed, is that the Washington Post’s and New York Times’s reporting missed the main story.

Mickey Kaus (h/t Instapundit) sums it up nicely:

You Know This Guy We Haven’t Told You About? Well, He’s Not Going to Be Important!

And while in a way it’s funny that the MSM ignored the Freeman story until it was basically over, Jennifer Rubin points to the abdication of publications like the NY Times and the Washington Post. She concludes:

And why didn’t Pincus or the Times ask any lawmakers about their motives? You pick — laziness or bias? I suspect it is the same reason they used the religion of certain bloggers as a proxy for mind-reading the motives of those opposing Freeman. In short, they have become convinced of the existence of a nefarious Israel Lobby, so facts no longer matter.

As Rubin noted, The HIll interviewed a number of legislators and all of them insisted that they had their own reasons for opposing Freeman and that AIPAC had contacted none of them. (More via memeorandum) Newsweek attributed the major opposition to Freeman as coming from Nancy Pelosi because of Freeman’s support for the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests.

My own suspicion is that Freeman was moved to withdraw for a different reason. It makes no sense that the Obama administration would be swayed by a bunch of conservative, pro-Israel bloggers, so I can’t believe the blogging (or reporting) is what cause Freeman to withdraw. And since the MSM was largely silent about the appointment there couldn’t have been that many people who know who Freeman is and even fewer who knew about the appointment. (Do you figure that even 1 million people knew about the appointment? I doubt it.) So sure Freeman’s opponents tried to get the word out about his liabilities, but there was no place for those reports to get any political traction.

What did happen is that Representatives Kirk and Israel pressed for the NIC’s Inspector General to investigate Freeman. That investigation was bound to show that his ties with Saudi Arabia were more extensive than advertised. There’s no indication that the Obama administration asked for Freeman’s withdrawal. (There’s also no indication that the administration fought for his appointment.) One can only conclude that it was Freeman himself who feared the revelations of the IG and stepped aside before they became an issue. His accusation that the Israel Lobby scuttled his appointment was calculated to obfuscate the real issue. Still there was a credulous media ready to accept it.

The LA Times yesterday opined:

Our opinion is this: Israel is America’s friend and ally. It deserves to exist safely within secure borders. We hope it will continue to prosper as a refuge for Jews and a vibrant democracy in the region (alongside an equally democratic Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza). But we do not believe that Israel should be immune from criticism or that there is room for only one point of view in our government.

U.S. policy has been extremely supportive of Israel over the years, as have many of our policymakers. That’s fine. But theirs should not be the only voices allowed in the room.

Similarly MSNBC alleged:

Criticizing Israel — legitimately or not — is the ultimate third rail of American politics, even in a new administration promising change.

The problem though isn’t that Freeman criticizes Israel, it’s that he demonizes Israel. Take this line:

Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace.

I’d challenge this premise, but Jeffrey Goldberg did a fair, if imperfect, job of it:

I argue constantly that Israel shares the Palestinian talent for never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but really, has Israel never shown any talent for peace? Even Benny Morris and the new historians would argue that this is, at best, inconsistently the case. Israel, after all, ceded the entire Sinai peninsula to Egypt in exchange for peace; it made a durable peace with the Hashemites; it pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, only to be rewarded by Hezbollah rocket fire and ground attacks; it went to Camp David that same year and offered what President Clinton considered to be a credible set of concessions to the Palestinians, only to have Yasser Arafat reject them without making a counter-offer; and in 2005, one of Israel’s great warriors, Ariel Sharon, unilaterally conceded the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority. Did he do that in the interest of furthering war with the Palestinians?

As Goldberg showed, Freeman’s statement was ahistorical. It wasn’t the result of analysis. And it wasn’t criticism. It was pure vitriol.Claiming that Freeman is a critic of Israel understates the case. He is much more hostile than a critic.

Claiming that the Israel lobby brooks no dissent and stopped the appointment overstates the case. Unfortunately, the MSM is all too accepting of those claims and of Freeman. That they didn’t do basic due diligence is the real scandal here. But other than a few bright spots, don’t expect the MSM to be introspective about their latest failure.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Washington’s lobbying machine deprived Barack Obama of a valuable adviser.

I’m not going to bother with David Broder’s Chas Freeman’s withdrawal is a loss for the country.

However on the op op-ed page the editors of the Washington Post weigh in on Chas Freeman failed nomination with a fantastic editorial. (via memeorandum) I’m often critical of Hiatt and co. but today they were right on.

It wasn’t until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister “Lobby” whose “tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency” and which is “intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government.” Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel — and his statement was a grotesque libel.

While the editors of the Post seem now to have been bothered by the appointment, they found Freeman’s statement on his withdrawal confirmation of his unfitness. This is an important point. That statement was vicious and as Jake Tapper noted, it was in response to a pretty standard debate over a candidates fitness. Is there any Freeman supporter who read that statement and said, “Gee, this guy really is extreme?” If there were any, I haven’t read them yet. This gives further credence to the thought that Freeman’s supporters were driven more by his anti-Israel stands than for his “contrarian” views.

The Post scores another hit:

For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman’s appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn’t bother to contact the Post editorial board. According to a report by Newsweek, Mr. Freeman’s most formidable critic — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — was incensed by his position on dissent in China.

Damn that Chinese democracy lobby! (The Post’s reporter, Walter Pincus reported that an AIPAC official gave reporters negative information about Freeman when asked for background on the appointee.)

And this:

But let’s consider the ambassador’s broader charge: He describes “an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics.” That will certainly be news to Israel’s “ruling faction,” which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.

The editors conclude:

But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges — and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.

Yes, they did become famous, didn’t they?

And Jennifer Rubin adds:

And that is where the story now leads us, they correctly note. How was it that Blair placed him in this role? And why should we now have confidence in his judgment?

And as far as Freeman’s famous contrariness, consider what James Fallows wrote:

For any of those roles, a man like Freeman might not be the prudent choice. But as head of the National Intelligence Council, my friend said, he would be exactly right. While he would have no line-operational responsibilities or powers, he would be able to raise provocative questions, to ask “What if everybody’s wrong?”, to force attention to the doubts, possibilities, and alternatives that normally get sanded out of the deliberative process through the magic known as “groupthink.” As Dan Froomkin of NiemanWatch wrote in an item that called Freeman “A One-Man Destroyer of Groupthink,”

He has… spent a goodly part of the last 10 years raising questions that otherwise might never get answered — or even asked — because they’re too embarrassing, awkward, or difficult.
For him to be put in charge of what [Laura Rozen of Foreign Policy] calls “the intelligence community’s primary big-think shop and the lead body in producing national intelligence estimates” is about the most emphatic statement the Obama Administration could possibly make that it won’t succumb to the kind of submissive intelligence-community groupthink that preceded the war in Iraq.

Actually the website is called Nieman Watchdog. But I read Froomkin’s interview with Freeman there and his description of Freeman. I saw nothing to distinguish Freeman’s views there. I saw one Bush critic, Froomkin, admiring another Bush critic, Freeman. Their views were pretty standard anti-Bush views. I’m not sure what impressed Fallows so much.

On the Post’s electronic op-ed page, Charles Lane makes the same point in the Real Chas Freeman.

Now, you can agree or disagree with Freeman’s take — I think it’s rubbish. But one thing it definitely is not is original. Susan Sontag said more or less the same thing just after September 11, 2001. You can get some version of this “analysis” any day of the week in the blogosphere or the Middle East Studies programs of our major universities.

As best I can tell, what distinguishes Freeman from other retailers of these clichés is attitude. It’s not just that he believes what he believes, he insists on sneering at or questioning the intelligence and good faith of those who disagree — while trumpeting his own supposed intellectual bravery. This has its ugliest manifestation, of course, in his embrace of conspiracy theories about the “Israel Lobby.”

So while the MSM today seems to be missing the point about the Freeman controversy, the editorial pages of the Washington Post are home to some good points.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Walter Pincus, the reporter, correctly writes:

Freeman’s angry rhetoric notwithstanding, the controversy surrounding the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia was broader than just Middle East politics. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair’s choice of Freeman prompted a storm of complaints about his recent commercial connections to China and questions about whether he was too forgiving of that nation’s leaders.

But most of the online attention focused on Freeman’s work for the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that is funded in part by Saudi money, and his past critical statements about Israel. The latter included a 2005 speech he gave to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, where he referred to Israel’s “high-handed and self-defeating policies” stemming from the “occupation and settlement of Arab lands,” which he called “inherently violent.”

Well, Freeman’s statements about Israel were not just critical, they were condemnatory. But the first paragraph is important. I also wish that Pincus had quoted some of Freeman’s more sycophantic statements about Saudi Arabia.

Throughout the article though, Pincus fails to discuss two things. The silence of the media and the silence of the administration. So when he writes:

But Block responded to reporters’ questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him. Asked about this yesterday, Block replied: “As is the case with many, many issues every day, when there is general media interest in a subject, I often provide publicly available information to journalists on background.”

To whom did Block provide information? Did they use it? Or did he only provide information in the past couple of days?

Later on, Pincus gives a brief history of the appointment.

Rosen’s initial posting was the first of 17 he would write about Freeman over a 19-day period. Some of those added more original reporting, while some pointed to other blogs’ finds about Freeman’s record. In the process, Rosen traced increasing interest in the appointment elsewhere in the blogosphere, including coverage by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard, and Chait and Martin Peretz of the New Republic.

Interest also was growing among members of Congress.

On March 2, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) wrote Blair to raise concerns based on what he had read about Freeman’s positions. Two days later, he called for Blair to withdraw the appointment.

Also on March 2, the Zionist Organization of America called for support of a letter by Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) that called on the DNI inspector general to investigate Freeman for possible conflicts of interest because of his financial relations with Saudi Arabia. That letter, signed by Kirk and seven other congressmen, including House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), was sent to Inspector General Edward Maguire on March 3.

Close observers of the events consider that request a turning point in the effort to stop Freeman’s candidacy, and Rosen’s blog began focusing almost exclusively on the appointment.

On Monday, the seven Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee wrote Blair to protest his choice, which was not subject to Senate confirmation, and threatened to review the NIC’s work as long as Freeman chaired that body.

The phrase I bolded, is significant. I’ve written before that I don’t see how a controversy that took place outside of the public’s view, had any effect on Freeman’s nomination. I concluded that his ties to foreign governments was probably what sunk the nomination. If the request for the IG to investigate was a turning point, it supports that speculation.

But if Freeman’s foreign ties are what sunk the nomination, why did it take a request from Congress to investigate them? Wasn’t anyone in the media the least bit curious. (Well Eli Lake was. Why didn’t Pincus mention Lake?)

The New York Times coverage is even worse. Its report Israel Stance Was Undoing of Nominee for Intelligence Post seems focused on supporting Freeman’s accusations.

Because President Obama himself has been viewed with suspicion among many pro-Israel groups, the attacks on Mr. Freeman had the potential to touch a nerve. Many of these groups applauded Mr. Obama’s appointments of Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Dennis B. Ross as a special adviser for Iran and Persian Gulf issues, but remain suspicious of other members of his administration who will be dealing with Arab-Israeli matters.

After complaints from some pro-Israel groups during his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter, who has sometimes been critical of Israel.

The Times briefly mentions the request for an investigation into Freeman’s dealings with the Chinese and Saudi Arabian governments, but doesn’t mention that his group, MEPC, is generously funded by Saudi money. The focus of the article is on the opposition to the nomination by pro-Israel groups and politicians.

At the end the Times allows Freeman’s defense of his comments about Tiananmen Square.

Critics also unearthed e-mail messages attributed to Mr. Freeman that seemed to support the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, saying it was not “acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be.”

Mr. Freeman said Wednesday that the passage was taken out of context, and that he had been describing the dominant view in China in the years after the crackdown.

But as anyone who read the e-mail knows, he also expressed his own view and that concurred with that “dominant view.” As Just One Minute noted (h/t Instapundit):

Yup, that “seemed” to support the crackdown. If someone can restore the missing context to help us see how Freeman in fact opposed the crackdown that would be lovely.

That the Times didn’t even look up the e-mail and allow Freeman to make his dubious claim is inexcusable.

In these two “hard news” stories little or nothing was done to investigate Freeman’s views or qualifications, but focused instead on the opposition to his appointment. Fortunately the opinion pages of the Washington Post were a little better.

UPDATE: Please see related thoughts at My Right Word and Shiloh Musings.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The Washington Post reports:

In an e-mail sent to friends yesterday evening, Freeman said he had concluded the attacks on him would not end once he was in office and that he did not believe the NIC “could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack.” He wrote that those who questioned his background employed “selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record . . . and an utter disregard for the truth.”

Such attacks, he said, “will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues.” And he said he regretted that his withdrawal may cause others to doubt the administration’s latitude in such matters.

This reporting hardly captures the intemperate tone of the e-mail. However the NYT did something interesting in its report:

In a message to colleagues and friends, first posted Tuesday evening on Foreign Policy magazine’s Web site, Mr. Freeman blamed pro-Israel groups for the controversy, saying 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.”

Joshua Block, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, said Tuesday that his organization had not taken a formal position on Mr. Freeman’s selection and had not lobbied Congress members to oppose it.

It’s hard to blame the lobby, when the lobby sat it out. (Well no doubt Freeman’s defenders will say that it was the lobby’s unofficial minions who reacted to their masters’ winks in Tel Aviv who mobilized against the appointee.)

Andrew Sullivan (via memeorandum) asks a couple of good questions, but gives a very poor answer to one and leaves the other unanswered. Why did this controversy take place in blogosphere? And why didn’t the administration respond to the critics. He answered the latter question, because it is impossible to hold a free debate about the Israel/Palestine issue in this country. This is, of course, nonsense.

But his first point is especially good. Why would a controversy that takes place away from the news pages affect a political appointment. It can’t be argued that what administration critics write in the Weekly Standard or Wall Street Journal would discourage the administration from supporting Freeman. But remember Freeman’s financial dealings were to be investigated. My guess is that Freeman’s withdrawal from consideration reflects fears that the IG would have found something compromising. The noise generated from one side of the aisle provided Freeman with some cover, but I find it hard to believe that it was decisive in his decision to withdraw.

Freeman, in his angry e-mail complains about distortions of his record. But his unabashed fondness for Saudi Arabia is very clear in his interviews with SUSRIS and his views the Chinese response to the protests at Tianenman square were not distorted. Freeman’s critics simply emphasized the record that was publicly available.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Today, the Obama administration accepted the withdrawal of Chas Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council By doing so the Obama administration made clear that Freeman’s conflicts of interest with Saudi Arabian and China made him unfit to interpret intelligence. It also showed that Freeman’s unwarranted hatred of Israel tainted his judgment.

This support for Israel by the new administration highlights two important points about Obama and his die-hard, ideological opponents. First, the President has once again illustrated that he works hard to keep his campaign promises. Second, it highlights the tenacity of Obama’s ideological opponents to invariably find him to be intensely anti-Israel—even if that evidence runs up against cold hard facts.

NJDC spokesman, Aaron Keyak called on Jewish Democrats to thank President Obama for accepting Freeman’s withdrawal.

It was not surprising that the President’s knee-jerk critics, many of whom are in our own community, could not wait for yesterday’s announcement before accusing the Obama administration of appointing an anti-Israel official.

Once again, President Obama has shown that he will sand against unfair criticism of Israel.

Thank the President for standing by his commitment of supporting Israel. Let President Barack Obama know that you support this decision, and send a letter to him now.

Neither Forman nor Keyak have actually written anything like this about Freeman’s withdrawal, but they wrote similar things about the American withdrawal from Durban II. Ignoring the issue as to whether the U.S. should have been involved in the planning of Durban II, both acted as if the eventual American withdrawal vindicated their portrayal of the President as being reliably pro-Israel.

In fact Keyak’s gone one step further. In a post titled Two views on the Administration’s Durban II Policy, Keyak presented the AJC’s and Anne Bayefsky’s contrasting responses to the Durban II withdrawal and concludes with

We leave it to our readers to decide who has the most credibility when it comes to assessing this administration’s performance.

Given Keyak’s earlier dismissal of Bayefsky as an “anti-Obama” partisan this is a not too subtle rejection of her. But Keyak ignores:
1) Bayefsky is more concerned with the UN than with American politics. She warned that no good would come of the American’ participation in planning Durban II. If the Obama administration hadn’t participated in the planning, Bayefsky wouldn’t have criticized the administration.
2) Bayefsky pointed to American statements to the effect that the U.S. would participate in the UN Human Rights council, which is the organization that is in charge of Durban II. Plus she mentioned that the administration explained the decision to two different groups: Jewish groups on one side and a combination of Arab and human rights groups on the other.

Bayefsky pointed to actual concerns and wasn’t acting as an “anti-Obama partisan.” To call her a critic would be fair, but that’s not what Keyak did.

The NJDC is free, of course, to defend the Obama administration. What’s disturbing is their insistence in questioning the integrity of Obama’s critics. It looks that the administration recently did good regarding Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann , but its actions on Durban II and Freeman only confirm the fears the pro-Israel community had.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

First, how long can the rest of the mainstream media hold out without reporting on an embarrassing debacle for the Obama administration? This is the John Edwards story on steroids — a virtual conspiracy of silence with little if any journalistic justification. And here the issue is really important — the appointment of a key intelligence official who is alleged to harbor serious conflicts of interest and extreme views. I have made inquiry at two prominent, national newspapers about the lack of coverage and have received one “I’ll pass it on” from the ombudsman and only an automated response acknowledging receipt from the other.

I think that part of the issue is that the MSM doesn’t regard the choice of Freeman as an embarrassment. In the area of foreign policy there is a divide. On the one side there are the ideologues who can be identified as being conservative, Republican or pro-Israel and then there’s everyone else. Since Freeman cannot be clearly identified as one of those three groups, he is, therefore, implicitly non-partisan and beyond suspicion. Never mind that an appointee who is as close to Israel as Freeman is to Saudi Arabia would get plenty of scrutiny. Chalk it up to an implicit “Israel lobby” bias.

Rubin was praising Jake Tapper for his thoughts on the Freeman controversy. Tapper (via memeorandum) shows a capacity for critical thought.

Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair — who picked Freeman — says “Director Blair selected Ambassador Freeman because he thought he would be the best person for the job. He is a distinguished public servant with a wealth of expertise in defense, diplomacy and intelligence — all skills that are necessary to producing first rate assessments.”

Still, many wonder about Freeman’s ability to produce first rate assessments, especially given his long relationship with the rulers of Saudi Arabia (whom Mr. Freeman has not held accountable in recent years, as far as I can tell, for the rise of al Qaeda or for that terrorist organization’s wrath).

And if one read Freeman’s interviews with the Saudi-US Relations Information Service, one would wonder who’s this guy whose supporters call a contrarian thinker. Here’s an excerpt from Freeman interview last year:

The Saudis have done a very good job, frankly, in dealing with their internal terrorist problem. There is an obvious problem when people who have little familiarity with the Kingdom are making judgments on the basis of whatever erroneous impressions they derive from other ignorant people in the United States about Saudi Arabia. So corporate legal counsels continue to be a brake on investment. But, in the end, the Gulf is going to be a place in which more and more of the worlds financial liquidity will be concentrated and that will have a large attraction. Among destinations in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia will be particularly attractive because of growing energy shortages and the prospect of continued high oil production and escalating prices for oil and gas in the future.

This isn’t a statement from a professional skeptic. This is the statement of an unapologetic booster. How good has the Saudi Arabian anti-terror program been? Well if one refers to their deprogramming techniques, the results of those efforts have been, shall we say, inconsistent. And Freeman’s last sentence about “escalating” oil prices hasn’t exactly been prescient.

And in 2006, he had an even more revealing interview with SUSRIS:

Frankly, I’m delighted that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has, after a long delay, begun to make serious public relations efforts. I applaud this, but I have to say, unexciting as the Middle East Policy Council may be, we have been around a long time — close to 30 years. We are constant. We are like the faithful wife. We will be there whether the money is there or not, as long as we can survive. We do what we do because we believe in it.

Notwithstanding the current difficult atmosphere, with the help of my colleagues at MEPC — a very lean organization, only a few staff — but with their help I am hopeful that we can put this effort on a sustainable long-term basis. It’s clear that 50 or 100 years from now some similar effort will still be necessary. If the Middle East Policy Council were to disappear it would not be easily replaced.

This is Freeman in his own words. He sees himself as an advocate for Saudi Arabia. One would think someone this admittedly partisan shouldn’t be considered for a post that requires objectivity.

However the Washington Post today has its intelligence reporter, Walter PIncus pick up on the controversy.

All seven Republican members of the Senate intelligence committee yesterday joined a small chorus of voices on Capitol Hill criticizing the choice of a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia for a senior intelligence position, concerned about his views on Israel and his past relationships with Saudi and Chinese interests.

Pincus, not surprisingly, reduces the controversy to a partisan issue. But here’s what looks problematic:

Since 1997, he has presided over the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that is funded in part by Saudi money. In that role, Freeman has occasionally criticized the Israeli government’s positions and U.S. support for those policies. In 2007, for example, he said, “The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending,” adding, “American identification with Israel has become total.”

The problem with his stewardship of MEPC isn’t that he criticized Israel in that capacity. That’s a feature of his tenure. The problems is, as noted above, that he saw himself as an advocate for Saudi Arabia. How would the same folks who claim that Freeman’s critics are “smearing” him describe it if the head of AIPAC was tapped for the same post? Would they simply allow the appointment to pass without comment? Would they question his objectivity as Freeman’s critics are mostly doing? Or would they question the loyalty of the appointee?

Pincus also, incredibly, lets Freeman off the hook for his comments on the Chinese government’s response to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Pincus writes:

Freeman has also been faulted for statements about the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989. Critics have said that he faulted the Chinese for not acting earlier in putting down the demonstrations, but Freeman said the remarks were his assessment of how Chinese leaders had seen things.

However, as the e-mail that was discovered by Michael Goldfarb shows no such detachment.

I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than — as would have been both wise and efficacious — to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo’s response to the mob scene at “Tian’anmen” stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

For myself, I side on this — if not on numerous other issues — with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be.

Even if Freeman’s saying that what’s plausible – though not necessarily acceptable – is what the Chinese authorities felt, how does he explain his statement starting “I do not believe it is acceptable….?” That sounds like Freeman’s endorsing the official Chinese regret about being “overly cautious.”

So the MSM, in the form of a Wasington Post article, has finally covered the Chas Freeman nomination. But the incurious treatment that Walter Pincus has given the nominee suggests that the MSM is working from the premise that there is nothing compromising about his ties to Saudi Arabia and China, and that the main news is that a bunch of pro-Israel neocons object.

UPDATE: Today, the news broke that Freeman withdrew his name for consideration for the post as head of the NIC. Two observations: it took until the very end of the process for either the NYT or WaPo to cover this appointment. Why not? Also, the administration did not appear to fight very hard for Freeman. Again, why not?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

For these leftists, it’s no longer enough to bash Israeli right-wingers or to support the Israeli left in its efforts. Whether I agree with them or not, that’s a legitimate position for an American Jew to take, but when Rosenberg and his ilk start backing Chas Freeman and apologizing for Walt and Mearsheimer that’s something very different. Their argument these days seems to be that the best way to be “pro-Israel” is to back anyone — and I do mean anyone — who will attack Israel.

And then there’s been – what’s been even more shameful – the silence of the media. Jennifer Rubin:

And yet the major news outlets turn a blind eye. Perhaps, like the New York Times, which chose to ignore Reverend Wright’s rantings for weeks, the MSM would rather not raise the curious story of Chas Freeman. It is not the role of the media to cover for the president’s egregious missteps, you say? Well, welcome to the media in the Age of Obama. Not even an appointment as bizarre as Freeman nor the controversy it has engendered is worth a story — because that might start the public buzzing over what a shill for the House of Saud, an Israel-basher, and apologist for Chinese thuggery is doing in an administration as high-minded as this one.

To my mind, Freeman’s admitted acceptance of money from Saudi Arabia makes him guilty of, at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. This is the sort of thing that any responsible publication would point out. But instead we have silence. And those who mention the appointment often attribute Freeman’s opposition to being “pro-Israel” or “neocons” as if Freeman’s ties are only of concern to those groups. (see memeorandum)

But let’s go back a few years and recall when Elliott Abrams was picked by the Bush administration to be director of Middle East affairs? Well the New York Times wasn’t so reticent about his appointment or his background.

Elliott Abrams, a pugnacious conservative and passionate advocate of Israel, is no stranger to Washington’s policy wars. But Mr. Abrams’s selection this week as President Bush’s director of Middle Eastern affairs at the White House plunged him into one of the sharpest disputes in the nation’s capital — the one in the administration over how to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A few months later the Washington Post featured a front page article (enthusiastically quoted by Pat Buchanan) listing the number of Bush administration officials with strong ties to … Israel. The article “Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy” appeared Feb. 9, 2003 and was written by Robert Kaiser. It featured this:

Some Middle East hands who disagree with these supporters of Israel refer to them as “a cabal,” in the words of one former official. Members of the group do not hide their friendships and connections, or their loyalty to strong positions in support of Israel and Likud .

One of Abrams’s mentors, Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, led a study group that proposed to Binyamin Netanyahu, a Likud prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999, that he abandon the Oslo peace accords negotiated in 1993 and reject the basis for them — the idea of trading “land for peace.” Israel should insist on Arab recognition of its claim to the biblical land of Israel, the 1996 report suggested, and should “focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”

Besides Perle, the study group included David Wurmser, now a special assistant to Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, and Douglas J. Feith, now undersecretary of defense for policy. Feith has written prolifically on Israeli-Arab issues for years, arguing that Israel has as legitimate a claim to the West Bank territories seized after the Six Day War as it has to the land that was part of the U.N.-mandated Israel created in 1948. Perle, Feith and Abrams all declined to be interviewed for this article.

So when do the MSM feel the need to question one’s commitment to American interests? Apparently receiving major funding from Saudi Arabia to run an organization devoted to making Saudi Arabia look good is no cause for concern. No vetting necessary. But deviate from the foreign policy consensus a bit too much in favor of Israel and the alarm bells go off. Glad to know that the media’s past that silly dual loyalty stuff.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The main reason I do this is that I gave the benefit of the doubt to the administration’s motives in sending a delegation to the preparatory sessions in Geneva where some interventions proved just how weak we are and where also on other matters on which we should have intervened we skulked into the woodwork. And was I wrong!

Then it was about the pledge of $900 million for Hamas:

But the promise that putting our donation through the Palestinian Authority–which is to say, Fatah–will guarantee that it will arrive where it is addressed may be even a bigger joke. It’s hard to judge these matters in the Arab world. Who can tell which ruling group is more corrupt than another? Still, Fatah is widely held to be the most depraved and debauched among its fraternity. That’s one of the reason’s that Fatah lost the last parliamentary elections. It’s another reason that Hamas won the bloody civil war with Fatah in Gaza.

An unnamed State Department official said that other “existing, trusted mechanisms” would be used to distribute American help. This certainly means United Nations Relief and Works Agency which has done more to keep the refugee problem alive for six decades than any agency or government in the area. And that’s what U.N.R.W.A will want to do deep into eternity.

The administration’s announcement that it’s going to add nearly $1 billion to the country’s deficit will have to be approved by the Congress. Since this money can’t be wisely spent, I hope the House and Senate keep it at home

(Apparently President Obama’s promise to hold accountable those who receive government funds doesn’t extend overseas.)

Most recently it’s been about Chas Freeman.

But Freeman’s real offense (and the president’s if he were to appoint him) is that he has questioned the loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of Israel, the great swath of American Jews and their Christian countrymen, who believed that the protection of Zion is at the core of our religious and secular history, from the Pilgrim fathers through Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. And how has he offended this tradition? By publishing and peddling the unabridged John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, with panegyric and hysteria. If Freeman believes that this book is the truth he can’t be trusted by anyone, least of all Barack Obama. I can’t believe that Obama wants to appoint someone who is quintessentially an insult to the patriotism of some many of his supporters, me included.

Martin Peretz who gave his word that Barack Obama’s eloquence about Israel was sincere is now questioning that. He’s stunned. I hope that he will apologize for accusing those of us who were skeptical of President Obama’s commitment to Israel of bad faith or ignorance.

The NJDC that has praised the appointment of Dennis Ross as a Middle East coordinator focusing on Iran remains untroubled by these developments. If they’re not going to question these actions of the Obama administration, perhaps they, too, could at least apologize to those of us who doubted.

Finally I can’t understand why the media hasn’t even reported on the appointment of Freeman. This is an important post and he is close to two nations that don’t necessarily have America’s best interests at heart. I suppose over the weekend there will be an article in the Washington Post or New York Times reporting on the appointment of an accomplished diplomat to become the National Intelligence Coordinator and how pro-Israel groups are concerned because Freeman is viewed as being critical of Israel.

The lack of concern about Freeman from the media and from the Left shows how much they value critics of Israel. In any other circumstance an appointment of someone with Freeman’s conflicts of interest would be the subject of scrutiny. I guess his anti-Israel stands trump all else.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Welcome, Instapundit readers! Stick around, look around, and don’t forget to visit Soccer Dad’s blog.

UPDATE: After I wrote this the United States decided to withdraw from the Durban II conference. It’s a good decision, though I suspect some damage has been done.

Chas Freeman is a Washington insider with a twist. A former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, he now runs a think tank dedicated to raising questions that otherwise might never get answered — or even asked — because they’re too embarrassing, awkward, or difficult.

You can read the interview if you choose. Froomkin simply tosses Freeman softballs so that the latter can criticize the Bush administration. Consider the following Q & A:

Q. Are the Saudis winning or losing their battle against terrorism?

Freeman’s view: The answer is that they’re winning. (We, of course, are not.) So what is it that they are doing right?

1. They have essentially discredited the extremist ideology in their own mosques, by driving the radical imams from the pulpits.
2. They have co-opted or seduced or induced to defect a large number of people who were terrorists or were heading in that direction, and who are now going straight.
3. They’re killing anybody who’s left.

(See also Countering terrorism – for real, NiemanWatchdog.org, January 18, 2006)

What the Saudis are doing is precisely how the British succeeded against the IRA. By contrast, we are not dealing with the issue of ideology. Worse, our actions are actually provoking and aiding recruitment. We’re killing a lot of people, but a great deal of those we are killing are not at all associated with extremists, they just happen to be in the way.

This is simply anti-Bush boilerplate. Froomkin doesn’t follow up the question. He doesn’t even ask Freeman if his positive (and overly simplistic) view of Saudi Arabia derives from the largess Saudi Arabia has directed to him.

So Froomkin while (falsely) praising Freeman for asking uncomfortable questions, fails to ask his subject anything remotely challenging.

Anyway I see that Froomkin has followed up his interview with an up-to-date puff piece on Freeman.

Froomkin links to a post at Think Progress, titled “Right Wing Outraged At Chas Freeman’s Appointment To Head National Intelligence Council.” If Froomkin or any other “journalist” were doing the job that Gabriel Schoenfeld did, the outrage would be universal. But Froomkin’s more interested in Bush and Israel bashing than he is in journalism.

Both these articles are posted on a site called Nieman Watchdog, but as far as Freeman is concerned, Froomkin is a toothless lap dog.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has a good refutation of Freeman’s assertions about the success of Saudi Arabia’s anti-Jihad program. Again, Froomkin wasn’t interested in doing his job as a journalist by asking Freeman uncomfortable questions. (via memeorandum)

Crossopsted on Soccer Dad.