Well, AIPAC and its supporters have done it again. If you are seen as daring to be be even a bit even handed over middle eastern policies, i.e., Israel's continued illegal occupation of the West Bank and illegal settlements, you must be destroyed.
President Obama wanted Retired Ambassador Chas Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair asked him, with the President's approval. But AIPAC and the neo-cons apparently still rule Washington, not President Obama, so Freeman was forced to turn down the offer. That is ridiculous. President Obama believed this man was the right person.
Ambassador Freman:
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.
Freeman speaks out on his exit
These tactics are wrong. They damage President Obama and our nation.
The Nation wrote about the attacks on Freeman last month:
The target is Charles ("Chas") Freeman, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, former top Defense Department official during the Reagan administration, and president of the Middle East Policy Council, whose wide-ranging experience stretches from the Middle East to China. Freeman is slated to become chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the arm of Admiral Dennis Blair's Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The NIC is the body that includes a host of analysts called national intelligence officers who are responsible for culling intel from sixteen US agencies and compiling them into so-called National Intelligence Estimates. It's a critical job, since NIE's -- often released in public versions -- can have enormous political and policy impact. Cases in point: the infamous 2002 Iraq NIE on weapons of mass destruction and the 2007 NIE on Iran that revealed that Tehran had halted its work on nuclear weapons.
If the campaign by the neocons, friends of the Israeli far right, and their allies against Freeman succeeds, it will have enormous repercussions. If the White House caves in to their pressure, it will signal that President Obama's even-handedness in the Arab-Israeli dispute can't be trusted. Because if Obama can't defend his own appointee against criticism from a discredited, fringe movement like the neoconservatives, how can the Arabs expect Obama to be able to stand up to Israel's next prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu?
The Nation: Chas Freeman for NIC: Lots at Stake, 2/25/09
Freeman laid it all out in his statment after withdrawing his name.
You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.
I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. 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. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.
AIPAC and its fellow travellers win over President Obama. Not a good sign as Bibi Netanyahu takes power.
It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.
The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. 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.
There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.
The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment 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. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.
Freeman speaks out on his exit
Perhaps this is why people like Freeman must be destroyed: They tell the truth:
Iran does not yet have any highly enriched uranium, the fuel needed to make a nuclear warhead, U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and Defence Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant-General Michael Maples told Congress yesterday, disputing a claim by an Israeli official
.
Iran lacks right uranium for warhead, experts say
I understand that any criticism of Israel will be met with furious opposition, and, sometimes, even charges of anti-semitism. But silence is betrayal. So long as the Israel right wing and its neo-con supporters in America maintain a veto over the personnel in our government, there will be no peace in the middle east.