Many here have heard of the campaign to smear Chas Freeman who is being considered for an appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council.
Here is how Juan Cole describes Freeman:
Informed comment
Freeman is a man of enormous diplomatic experience, both a China expert and a Middle East hand, and is the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He is also a clear-sighted analyst who is not afraid to say that the US mission in Afghanistan has become quixotic, and that Israel's expansionist policies are bad for all concerned, including the US. As soon as his appointment was bruited, the well-connected coterie of right-Zionist pundits went after him, and it is pretty obvious that he was being smeared and punished for having dared publicly criticize Israel, which the Revisionists have tried for years to make a hanging offense.
NeoCons and their Likudnik allies really don't want a realist to be supplying intelligence to President Obama.
Cole continues:
The ultra-nationalist bullyboys set up Campus Watch to intimidate university administrations and to cow vulnerable assistant professors, which they have been doing with the utmost viciousness. They also bully congress, threatening to fund their rivals if they step out of line and decline to give Israel more cluster bombs to drop on innocent civilians. Most American Jews are social liberals and voted for Obama. They were the group, along with African-Americans, most likely to oppose the Iraq War in 2003. But the far-right Zionists among them have the big megaphones. Most major metropolitan newspapers have an ultra-nationalist Zionist columnist. Why? They are like 10 percent of the American Jewish community, which is 2 percent of the American population. But they aren't correct in their analyses. They aren't good writers. They don't represent any significant population. They are just ultra-nationalists. And their main activity is to try to smear and intimidate people.
Collumnists like Charles Krauthammer come to mind.
A military strategist once said that in order to dominate a population, you must put out its eyes. That is, you have to shut up the people who can see what is really going on. The ultra-nationalist bullyboys are trying to shut up Freeman and Walt, with character assassination and ad hominems and, in Freeman's case, blackballing. They have gotten away with this shameful behavior for so long, despite the enormous harm it has wrought to the United States, that one hesitates to short them. They may well succeed in derailing Freeman's appointment. But remember, these same pundits kept quoting to us the completely flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was just wrong. Freeman would be in charge of the writing of NIEs, and the ultra-nationalist pundits are afraid that he will get in the way of their plans for mayhem. If people don't stand up for Freeman, it is hard to see how they can escape some of the blame when things go pear-shaped because of future bad National Intelligence Estimates. (You can write the White House here.)
Will these NeoCon bullies succeed in their attempts to preserve their imprimatur inside our nation's intelligence community? We must do more than just hope that doesn't happen. Click the above link and let the Obama White House know what you think.