Chas Freeman...Not Gone & Not Yet forgotten...But Soon

Well, this morning Chas Freeman was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria.  In preceding posts, you can find out the background of the Chas Freeman story, but in short, he is a long-serving foreign service professional who was at one time under Bush 41 the ambassador to Saudi Arabia.  Here's the entire interview:

Now, Freeman comes across as a fairly mild-mannered kind-of-guy. And, there's little doubt that he has served our country honorably. And, he raises quite a number of issues with regard to israel that are certainly appropriate for discussion. So, what's wrong with this picture?

What I find most noxious about Freeman is that he believes (and he hints at this in the interview) that ONE of the reasons Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 is because Muslims were/are angry at the United States for its 'blind' support of Israel. A guy who believes that should not be in charge of the National Intelligence Council...the main task of which is to impartially evaluate intelligence and present it to the president.

Leslie Gelb summed it up nicely:



Now, I happen to believe that Freeman is an antisemite. A guy who calls the King of Saudi Arabia 'The Great Abdullah" simply because Abdullah claims to be willing to recognize Israel before other Arab nations (I guess excluding Egypt and Jordan, which have done so already) once Israel makes peace with the Palestinians. A guy who speaks about the 'Israel Lobby' in the creepy way Freeman does is an antisemite. A guy who works for a think-tank funded in large part by the Saudis, a guy with close ties to the Bin Laden family...I'm thinking this guy ain't Israel's best friend.