| Author | Message | | Shnozzle | | Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 9:11 pm Post subject: Israel lobby fails to block key Obama intelligence appointme |
| Israel lobby fails to block key Obama intelligence appointment. 
In Washington, the Israel lobby, a loose conglomeration of organisations and individuals who throw their weight behind what they perceive as Israel's strategic interests, has until recently enjoyed an unparalleled level of political influence. Nowadays, its power is clearly waning. The appointment of veteran diplomat and uber-realist Chas Freeman as chairman of the highly influential National Intelligence Council is seen by many as a major setback for the lobby. …
"As chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Freeman will be responsible for producing the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) - the classified document given to the president and senior intelligence officials that analyses threats to US security." …
http://thenational.ae/article/20090301/GLOBALBRIEFING/679024428
… Freeman is a one-of-a-kind choice: with an impeccably establishment pedigree, Freeman has developed over the years a startling propensity to speak truth to power, which is precisely what one would want in a NIC chairman. Over the last decade, he's excoriated Israel for its stubborn refusal to compromise with the Palestinians, he's accused George W, Bush and the "neocons" of having pushed America over a cliff in Iraq, and he's ridiculed the military-industrial complex for trying to tout China as a bugaboo because, Freeman once told me, the Pentagon has suffered from "enemy deprivation syndrome" since the end of the Cold War. … Freeman is a strident critic of Israel ….
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. …
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/411714/chas_freeman_for_nic_lots_at_stake | |  | | Shnozzle | | | | Top | | Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:23 am Post subject: |
| | Yeah one got through but guess who they sent to deal with the Syrians? Two Jews, one in State and the other a special envoy or something like that. They have it locked up. Mr Obama will try his best but unless he bucks them he will be the same as the others. Americans do not have a democracy or even a republic. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:57 pm Post subject: |
| Commentary Freeman's unpardonable 'sin' written
by Arnaud de Borchgrave
published by The Washington Times
Friday, March 6, 2009, 8:04 AM
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/06/intelligence-analyst-in-chief/
DE BORCHGRAVE: Freeman's unpardonable 'sin'
Arnaud de Borchgrave
COMMENTARY:
A rarity in Washington , the secret was well kept until the announcement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair. His deputy as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) is Charles "Chas" Freeman, a Chinese-speaking iconoclast with a brilliant analytical mind that is anathema to the Israel lobby and the neocons.
Lucky for former Ambassador Freeman that Judaism, in contrast to Christianity, does not believe in mortal sins. But his sin is beyond redemption in Washington . Mr. Freeman is convinced that U.S. and Israeli strategic interests are not necessarily one and the same.
This triggered a cascade of epithets from "Saudi puppet" to "Chas of Arabia linked to Saudi cash" to " China-coddling , Israel -basher," and a major campaign to derail the nomination. Leading the charge was Steve Rosen, former foreign policy director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Mr. Rosen, long one of AIPAC's most influential officials on Capitol Hill, is under federal indictment since Aug. 4, 2005, for alleged violations of the Espionage Act while carrying out the lobby's work. With co-defendant Keith Wiessman, he faces a frequently postponed trial, now scheduled to begin April 29. Currently with the Middle East Forum (MEF), Mr. Rosen won't have much trouble establishing policy planning documents routinely made their way between friends from the Pentagon to the Israeli Embassy.
Mr. Freeman's new job as analyst-in-chief for the IC (intelligence community) is to produce midterm and long-term strategic thinking, compiled from the best thinking of 16 intelligence agencies that employ 100,000 (almost half of them analysts) at a cost to the taxpayer of $50 billion a year.
In a speech to the Pacific Council on International Policy in 2007, Mr. Freeman said, "We embraced Israel 's enemies as our own; they responded by equating Americans with Israelis as their enemies."
Former ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during Gulf war I), Mr. Freeman's new job is "to provide policymakers with the best information: unvarnished, unbiased and without regard to whether the analytic judgments conform to current U.S. policy." NIC's quadrennial piece de resistance is the Global Briefing. Timed for release between Election Day and Inauguration Day, it "assesses critical drivers and scenarios for future global outcomes approximately 15 years out." From time to time, the Global Briefing, like all forecasts, makes astrology look respectable.
This latest, titled "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World," was briefed to Congress by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair. He called the global economic and financial crisis "our greatest threat," creating as it does millions more desperate people, many of them drawn to angry acts, also "regime-threatening instability," the kind of chaos that plays into al Qaeda's terrorist agenda.
Mr. Freeman incurred the wrath of AIPAC when he said in 2007, " Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them." Ha'aretz, the New York Times of Israel, frequently makes the same point, most recently with a secret defense document that established the creeping annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank .
Another conclusion, guaranteed to raise Israeli hackles, is Mr. Freeman's long-held belief that the terrorism the United States confronts is due largely to "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that has lasted over 40 years and shows no signs of ending." Accurate or not, this same refrain is heard from scholars to politicians to journalists in Arab and other Muslim capitals the world over. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Gaza "an open-air prison." And now this week's Newsweek cover blares in Arabic script "Radical Islam is a fact of life." Fareed Zakaria explains "How to live with it": "We don't have to accept the stoning of criminals, but it's time to stop treating all Islamists as potential terrorists."
Radical Islam has gained a powerful foothold in the Muslim imagination, says Mr. Zakaria, and television reporting on the death and destruction caused by Israeli bombs in the recent 22-day air and ground campaign in Gaza only strengthens the ranks of extremists.
Mr. Freeman also says Israeli contingency plans to bomb Iran 's nuclear installations would trigger Iran 's formidable asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities up and down the Persian Gulf and throughout the Middle East , where it can mobilize such surrogates as Hezbollah and Hamas. Neoconservative conventional wisdom, recently expressed publicly by former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle, is that Iran is bluffing.
Three years ago, Mr. Perle told this reporter two B2B bombers, each with 17 independently targetable weapons systems, could set Iran 's nuclear program back a few years. Now Mr. Perle says the neoconservative movement is a figment of its detractors' imagination. Neocons, he adds, played no role in persuading President George W. Bush 43 to invade Iraq .
They will have a tough time trying to persuade Mr. Obama to bomb Iran 's nuclear weapons installations. In fact, according to Ha'aretz, the United States has already turned down Israeli requests for military hardware to help it prepare for an aerial attack against Iran 's nuclear facilities.
Mercifully for Mr. Freeman, the NIC job is not subject to Senate confirmation. Had it been, Mr. Freeman would have been axed with a nod from AIPAC. But Mr. Blair made clear where he stood. His statement said Mr. Freeman will be responsible for overseeing the production of National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) and other Intelligence Community analytical products, providing substantive counsel to the DNI and senior policymakers on issues of top national security importance." NIEs are key factors in shaping foreign policy, particularly in wartime.
Mr. Freeman, 64, first joined the Foreign Service in 1965, served in India and Taiwan before his Chinese language abilities landed him the assignment of principal interpreter during President Nixon's breakthrough visit to China and his historic meeting with Mao Tse-tung in 1972. Mr. Freeman later become deputy chief of mission in Beijing and his aptitude for languages took him to various Asian posts before he became deputy Africa chief at the State Department, and later ambassador in Saudi Arabia (1989-92). He also served at the Pentagon as assistant secretary for international security affairs during the Clinton administration. And in 1997, Mr. Freeman succeeded George McGovern to become president of the Middle East Policy Council, which "strives to ensure that a full range of U.S. interests and views are considered by policymakers."
Or the flip side of Washington 's pro-Israel think tanks.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International. | | | | Shnozzle | | Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 2:41 am Post subject: |
| Charles (Chas) Freeman, who was slated to be picked as the new chairman of the National Intelligence Council, withdrew his candidacy for the post on Tuesday.
The move was announced in Washington by Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence. Since news of Freeman's nomination, Jewish organizations have leveled criticism at the pick due to his history of opposition to Israel's policies in the Palestinian territories …
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1070041.html
=====
The office of Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has released a statement announcing that Chas Freeman will not be National Intelligence Council Chairman:
Freeman speaks out on his exit:
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.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/10/chas-freeman-out-intel-ch_n_173645.html
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/03/10/freeman_speaks_out_on_his_exit
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-10/obamarsquos-mideast-policy-smackdown/3/
The Freeman fight: Was it all about Israel?
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/10/1003589/the-freeman-fight-is-it-all-about-israel
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1236676912910&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Of course - It was the Israel Lobby's handywork. No doubt !!!! | | | | Alpha | | | | Shnozzle | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
