The country dodged a bullet doing w/o Chas Freeman in Intelligence

Charles Freeman Orchestrated His Own Fall - Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA)
I am one of a number of members of Congress who challenged the selection of former ambassador Charles Freeman for chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman's charges of an elaborate conspiracy to derail his nomination are disingenuous. The "Israel lobby" never contacted me. For me, the warning flags about Charles Freeman went up when I learned of his questionable associations and inflammatory statements about China and Tibet. While the reports of Freeman's public statements first raised my concern about his suitability to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council, his words after his withdrawal crystallized exactly why Freeman was the wrong choice for the job. (Washington Post)
See also A Parting Shot that Maligns Obama, Too - Charles Lane
Even if Freeman had a perfectly legitimate grievance, even if he had been maligned, he wouldn't be entitled to respond in kind - much less to brand large numbers of his fellow citizens as fifth columnists. (Washington Post)

Why Freeman Was Wrong about What His Defeat Signified - David Rothkopf
What I did not like most about the Chas Freeman debacle was the degree to which it offered apparent support to the "Israel Lobby" theories of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Whatever the pale intellectual merits of Walt's argument may be, he and Mearsheimer know full well that their prominence on this issue has come not because they have had a single new insight but rather because they were willing and one can only believe inclined to play to a crowd whose "views" were fueled by prejudice and worse. (Foreign Policy)

It was bad enough when the NIE Report of 11/07 cheerfully opined that Iran had the capability to build nuclear weapons but had abandoned the effort to do so in 2004. The authors of this report, believed now by almost no one, were Thomas Fingar, Vann Van Diepen and Kenneth C. Brill who, in retrospect seemed to have had an ax to grind in this matter: the very last thing you want in those who write summaries of intelligence estimates. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/12/the_suspect_provenance_of_the.html

The present Director of Intelligence, Adm Dennis Blair, likewise seems disposed to dismiss, in public, estimates of Iranian INTENT to build nuclear weapons while acknowledging Iranian capability and dismissing as well the very different estimates of intent by other intelligence agencies. As the columnist Caroline Glick has suggested: Blair will believe ANYthing that Iran tells him and NOTHING that Israel says.

The Committee of Senator Frank Church eviscerated the intelligence apparatus of the U.S. and implanted overtly political members that have led the U.S., a country with enormous resources, to be unable to rely on its intelligence agencies for objective analysis, let alone effective covert action. One can only hope that its sorry, politicized public persona is outweighed by a more robust non-public capability. Sadly, it seems that Democrats have some special animus for the intelligence services and cut their effectiveness down whenever in power. There is something so intrinsically "unPC" about spying and covert actions and interrogations that liberals seem to abhor intelligence naturally. (I wonder if that was my subconscious choosing the words.)

Based on the politically-motivated 11/07 report and the attempt to implant Amb. Freeman, who is someone with no analytical background and with so many worrisome conflicts of interest, citizens can worry indeed about the situation and about what the government in power is thinking.

Of course, now the backlash begins and Amb. Freeman and the anti-Israel Lobby ( consisting of those who profit from bashing Israel through selling books and lectures and getting grants from Muslime sources) are gearing up to blame the "Israel Lobby" for this withdrawal although Newsweek reported that it was Speaker Pelosi who flushed down Freeman's appointment because of his outrageous comments on Chinese suppression at Tiananmen Square and in Tibet and that Freeman's bias against Israel had nothing to do with the final pressure to withdraw.
http://tinyurl.com/cwmlvk

Nevertheless, "the Jews" will be blamed for Freeman's displacement; the Jews and the bicyclists. ( WHY THE BICYCLISTS? Why the Jews. ) Actually, when you think of it, it's really quite logical to blame Jews and Israel rather than, say, Jihadis, Radical Muslimes or Muslime Terrorists. When was the last time Jews hijacked an airplane or torched a church or blew up a subway or assassinated a movie maker or declared a death sentence against an author? It's quite safe to impugn Jews and Judaism and Israel and no amount of invective results in any terrorist reprisal.

On the other hand, the Brits and the French and the Dutch and the Spaniards are justifiably terrified that any criticism of Muslimes will cause property losses at a minimum and likely loss of life as well. Who says that "bad" treatment creates terrorists? It is terrorism that creates, not a backlash, but appeasement. That is the object of terrorism. Sadly, it works against the civilized.

Did terrorism work against the Nazis? Their response to the slightest hint was Draconian ( think of "demonstrating" in or near Lidice ). Would Gandhi have succeeded in gaining Indian Independence via non-violent means had the ruler been Russia or Nazi Germany instead of Britain?