Chas Freeman Affair:

The lying liars are out in force

So he has been ejected (self-propelled, so the story goes) out of Obama's administration but the danse macabre is just beginning to swirl from the usual suspects:

Of course, none of this information will dissuade Chas Freeman's defenders, who really know that it was the Israel Lobby and its shills who ultimately won the "scalp" of this upstanding civil servant, in the words of Joe Klein (who subtly titles his post on the matter, "Assassination.") These writers already have a narrative about how things work in Washington, and they won't let inconvenient little things like facts get in the way of propounding upon it. "Chuck Schumer is taking credit, which will be no surprise to readers aware of his career-long interest Chinese democracy promotion," snarks Ezra Klein. "Chinese human rights activists everywhere are high-fiving," wrote Matthew Yglesias (actually, at least 87 were). “This is clearly a win for advocates of Chinese human rights and liberalism and empiricism, and not other issues; Chuck Schumer is obviously playing for votes in Chinatown," said Spencer Ackerman. The purpose of this argumentative tic is to impugn the motives of those who opposed Freeman by portraying us all as a bunch of Israel-obsessed McCarthyites, and that the real reason we opposed him was not some newfound aversion to people who defend the slaughter of 2,400 unarmed democracy protestors, but because he had a few not nice things to say about Bibi. I was unaware that these men posessed mind-reading capabilities. (That one could oppose Freeman for his views about Israel and China -- not to mention his dubious financial dealings with the Saudis -- never figured into these writers's semiotic analyses).

Jeffrey Goldberg makes 5 observation about Chas Freeman

And from amy Isseroff:

There was no chance that Freeman as intelligence analyst would ever see the slightest possibility that Israel was in the right about any issue, or that Israeli intelligence might be correct on any point where it conflicted with views of his friends. Just as it would be absurd to appoint the head of AIPAC to vet US intelligence, so it was equally absurd and bizarre to nominate the President of the MEPC and a member of the board of the Iranian-American Council to that post.

The supporters of Freeman never fought for him on the issues, but rather on the one irrelevant bogey man issue of "Israel Lobby." Whether or not Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, intended it, the struggle over the nomination of Freeman became an outpost in the battle in a war against Israel and supporters of Israel. It was intentionally billed as such by those who oppose Israel under the guise of "tough love." The issue is billed as support for settlements or "hard line" Israeli negotiating positions vis-a-vis the Palestinians, but that facade is transparent to anyone who wants to look. Some of the rhetoric has now degenerated into frank attacks on "Jews."