The Assault on Chas Freeman

I went to prep school with Chas Freeman and have watched his career with awe.

When I met him he spoke no foreign language. He started spanish at Milton and within 12 months scored an 800 SAT. He studied chinese at Yale and within a decade was Nixon's main translator on the trip to China.

The young Chas was brilliant, kind, and reasonable. I suspect his unwillingness to play the Washington game prevented him from being a secretary of state. I have no reason to believe that he would ever compromise his positions to achieve financial or career gains.

It is also time to resume the relative balance that existed before George W. Bush gavee veto power
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Just thought you'd like to know about the typo.
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It sounds like a "team of rivals" kind of appointment.

I want to defend the broader conservative objection and suggest respectfully that Mr. Klein misses the point. The problem is not that Freeman thinks outside the box, nor of course that he is critical of Israel. The problem is that Freeman appears to side instinctively against America and with whichever dictatorship currently sponsors his lifestyle--and this gives him a simplistic and frankly deluded perspective. Read his speech on China here (http://www.mepc.org/whats/MaoZedong.asp), and comments on 9/11 here (http://sandbox.blog-city.com/chas_freeman_911_september_11.htm). Freeman lavishes praise on the rulers of Saudi Arabia and China, serves as their most devoted apologist, and seems to devote the greater part of the speeches he gives in those countries to slandering the United States in a one-sided manner.
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For instance, Freeman assures us that any concern that China's growing military might act offensively is "delusional." How does he know this? Because Mao instilled the Chinese people with the ideal of a "people's war," and this is "inherently defensive." That's his argument. Never mind Tibet, both in Mao's time and recently. In fact, the fear of military aggression is just ginned up by the US in order to justify expanding the olde "military-industrial complex." He also says Hezbollah is devoted to the "people's war" concept. Is that why it was launching attacks against Israel? Freeman always assumes that we are lying and all other countries, even the most authoritarian regimes, are telling the truth.
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Further, “China is popular in no small measure because it now stands against us in its opposition to coercive diplomacy,” in its “rejection of the notion of humanitarian intervention, and insistence on adherence to the norms of international law.” (Nevermind international law on human rights, political rights, animal rights...never mind China's trade with Sudan, arms sales to dictators, etc.). China is “the staunchest defender internationally of once purely European stipulations about the sovereign equality of states.” That this might be China's effort to prevent other countries from imposing on China such petty notions as the freedom of religion is not considered. The speech has barely a critical word for China.
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Then there are his statements that 9/11 was caused by our support of Israel (even though, before 9/11, he said al-Qaeda had nothing to do with the Israel issue). Our support of Israel surely further inflames many against us, but it's one of many causes, and not a major one, of al-Qaeda's hatred of the US.
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So, sorry for the long post, but the problem is precisely that Freeman is *not* a contrarian, and does *not* speak with candor. He parrots the lines of, and shows the same simplistic views as, the propagandists of the state press in authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia and China.
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(And by the way, a friendly note: the adjective is "loath," while "loathe" is the verb.)

pietr96 - thank you for your comment. One of the joys of blogs is connecting to a community of people, many of whom actually know true things.

It's fairly obvious the neo-cons have no real "love" for Israel. The Israeli conflict is a convenient excuse to boost the military industrial complex, keep a conservative fear machine moving to generate votes, and placate the whacky-doodle Christian far right that believe all Jews will spontaneously combust into Christian donators.
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I have no concept of what the average Israeli or Palestinian on the street is thinking except that people far away are playing pinball and they're the bumpers. No matter what deals are made in Washington, no matter what political posturing and photo-op headline sprays out, the real-time real-thing $-it hits them.
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It depresses me that we have another "expert" on this crap all lined up for reloading. Decades of folks that know everything but solve nothing because they don't boil down the human nature factor in any of this and make it work for the long haul. Just as with the stockmarket, if people believe that tomorrow will be slightly better than today then everything changes. The whole problem with the "solutions" to the entire Israeli conflict has been the idea that the only way to feel better about your future is to make sure someone else feels worse about theirs.

ahitophel
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You have been hoodwinked by the Weekly Standard in regards to Freeman's feelings on China. First of all it wasn't a speech, it was an email on a private listserv which is not really something that is ever supposed to be published but Mike Goldfarb, journalist that he is, decided to post it on his blog at Bill Kristol's NeoCon outfirt "the Weekly Standard". I have been posting this in different places around the blogosphere to try to get the genie back in the bottle at least in places where reasonable people sojurn so I will do it again here.
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First I strongly suggest everyone read this post from Spencer Ackerman.
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http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/03/06/balancing/
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Second I want to point out that his post was published in a pretty cowardly way by the NeoCon outfit the Weekly Standard. Anytime Bill Kristol's spot is the main source for a piece of information I would be suspicious. Apparently listservs are not normally what would be termed fair game when it comes to reporting and this was an email not some official "report" that Chas Freeman wrote up. Ackerman describes it as talking out loud. I am not familiar with listservs so I will defer to his description.
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Third allow me to post what he actually wrote about China and the Tienamen Square incident on the same listserv IN CONTEXT with my own emphasis in a couple of places.
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/03/freeman_in_context_on_china_ti.asp
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Of course, the US should maintain the capacity to intervene in the Western Pacific, not just with respect to the Taiwan issue but with respect to Indonesia-Australia and other potential conflicts involving our interests as well. Do you know anyone who advocates not doing so? With our defense spending now over half that in the world, it is, in any event, pretty hard to generate a lot of worry about our capabilities in this regard.
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I have, until recently, been among those most outspoken in tolling the warning bell about the possibility of Sino-American conflict over Taiwan. All signs seemed to me to point toward a Chinese decision, faute de mieux, to use force to resolve the issue when the prospects of success seemed good and Taiwan and the US had been lulled into a mood that would facilitate surprise. More recently, I have noted a conclusion by the Chinese leadership that the use of force will not be necessary. I think that is a credible judgment on their part and that armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait is therefore now less likely than in the past and, given sensible policies on our part and some measure of self restraint in Taiwan, will become still less likely in future. Notwithstanding this judgment, however, I think we must keep our powder dry. So we have no disagreement on that score.
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But I take issue with the "facts" on which you rest your conclusions. On your facts:
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(1) I can't imagine there was no surprise to the Chinese offensive against Vietnam. (At least, although not working on China per se at the time, I was not in the least surprised by it.) The Chinese had repeatedly warned Vietnam that continued empire-building in IndoChina would draw a forceful response. They gained the tacit support of some sections of the USG for their decision to make good on this warning. Having demonstrated that they could take Hanoi, QED, they withdrew and then quite cynically used the artillery and infantry duel on the border as live-fire training to battle-harden the remainder of their flabby post Cultural Revolution, internal security-oriented forces. This was a classic use of force for diplomatic purposes. It is very hard for me to condemn it while endorsing our uses of force in Grenada, Libya, or Panama not too much later. Great powers do what they must. There is nothing particularly insidious about the Chinese in that regard.
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(2) The attack on "unarmed students" at Tian'anmen (actually at Muxudi and Fuxingmen and other locations outside Tian'anmen) came after many weeks, even months, in which the Chinese leadership had lost control of security in their own capital. (The troops were, in fact, fired upon at Muxudi, though it is not clear by whom.) The only surprise to me (and other realists, including, I gather, you) was that the Chinese leadership did not act earlier to restore order. We would have done so, judging by the precedents set by MacArthur and our National Guard over the decades from 1920 - 1950. The main lesson those leaders who survived the affair have drawn from it, in fact, is that one should strike hard and strike fast rather than tolerate escalating self-expression by exuberantly rebellious kids. If June 4 tells us anything about the Chinese leadership it is that they are reluctant, often to the point of rashness, to resort to the use of force against their fellow citizens.
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(3) I am frankly stunned that you would argue that China has not "become more tolerant of dissent" in recent years. No one can have spent any time at all talking to ordinary people in China over the past two decades and have this view. Of course, outright opposition to rule by the Chinese Communist Party continues to draw a sharp response from the authorities. No government, including our own, is or should be asked to be prepared to tolerate efforts to overthrow it and the constitutional order it administers. (Ironically, despite our ideological predilections to believe the contrary, I am aware of no evidence that Chinese currently consider their government less "legitimate" or worthy of support than Americans do ours -- but I defer to [name redacted by TWS] and other experts on this.) Certainly, China continues to fall far short of our minimal expectations for human and civil rights in many respects but it has made very significant progress on many levels. To deny this is primarily to raise questions about the extent to which one has been able to observe readily observable reality...
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Now I could also point to both the actions of the police in southern states acting as agents of the government using firehoses and dogs on people protesting for Civil Rights along with the recently released OLC memos pointing to President Bush preparing to institute some form of martial law after 9-11 including undermining the free speech of the press as well as targeting Americans without granting them their rights under the Constitution as proof positive that Freeman was pretty on point when describing what our own country would have done in the face of the Tienamen Square situation in China.
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Make no mistake about it, most of the criticism coming at Chas Freeman eminates from NeoCons and their lobby. Sometimes you just have to peel back the layers. Their opposition has absolutely nothing to do with his position on China and absolutely everything to do with his criticism of Israel.

my formatting screwed up but the paragraph starting under the Weekly Standard should start the quoting and the paragraph ending with "To deny this is primarily to raise questions..." should have been the end of the quoting.

Joe Klein:
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On what basis do you label Andrew Sullivan a "very reliable source"?
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This is from Andrew Sullivan's famous piece in London's Sunday Times:
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It is also quite clear that the U.S. military presence in the Middle East must be ramped up exponentially,its intelligence overhauled, its vigilance heightened exponentially. In some ways, Bush has already assembled the ideal team for such a task: Powell for the diplomatic dance, Rumsfeld for the deep reforms he will now have the opportunity to enact, Cheney as his most trusted aide in what has become to all intents and purposes a war cabinet. The terrorists have done the rest. The middle part of the country - the great red zone that voted for Bush - is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

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It is worth noting that one could not have possibly been more wrong than this.
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Sullivan went on for years doing whatever he could to rhetorically link opposition to the invasion of Iraq with whatever traitorous image buzz-words he could, as in this representative excerpt from his blog on April 30, 2003:
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If you want further evidence that Galloway is guilty, here's a piece by Scott Ritter, defending him. I wonder if Galloway will decide to sue the Telegraph now, after all. And I wonder if the anti-war movement could be more damaged. (The news is also retroactively embarrassing for Diane Sawyer, who cited Galloway as emblematic of British anti-war sentiment earlier this year.) When I first mentioned the possibility of a fifth column, I presumed it would be fueled by ideological fervor. I didn't contemplate it could be fueled by the mighty dollar. You've got to love these Marxists, don't you?

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The reckless, thoughtless, feverish viciousness with which Sullivan conflated even realist foreign policy-based opponents like former National Security Advisor (under George H. W. Bush) Brent Scowcroft with historically discredited Marxists can truly be said without hyperbole to have been McCarthy-esque.
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To his great credit, Andrew Sullivan did what most of the political press corps could and did not: he very publicly said that he was wrong only five years after his initial egregious commentary, and only three years into the war. He did so in a fairly (and typically) foolish way:
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Regrets? Yes. But the certainty of some today that we have failed is as dubious as the callow triumphalism of yesterday. War is always, in the end, a matter of flexibility and will. And sometimes the darkest days are inevitable--even necessary--before the sky ultimately clears.

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, but he said publicly what many (most) could not bring themselves to fulfill their duties as journalists and Americans by saying:
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We have learned a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis and several thousand killed and injured American soldiers than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response to that is not more spin but a real sense of shame and sorrow that so many have died because of errors made by their superiors, and by writers like me. All this is true, and it needs to be faced.

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But, necessary apologies aside, it can be reasonably said that there is nobody apart from those still hoisting the banner of neo-conservatism less reliable than Andrew Sullivan. In fact, this is such common knowledge that blogger Ezra Klein said so quite reasonably in a blog post about Sullivan's thoroughly tarnished and discredited record on health care issues:
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It's a peculiar quirk of Washington that repeatedly being wrong doesn't harm your reputation for accuracy or prescience. Indeed, if you leverage your poor predictive abilities correctly, and always stay in a safe mainstream, they can even do something more important: Make you seem courageously honest.
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Sullivan hangs his hat on a reputation for honesty that comes because he constantly shifts his opinions as each, one after the other, is proven flagrantly incorrect, and the mainstream moves to reflect that. Then Sullivan spends a lot of time writing about his anguished evolution, and eventually settles in the new center. This was true of Bush, true of Iraq, true of some of the largest issues of our time. It's telling, though, that when wrong opinions serve his career, as happened in the case of No Exit or The Bell Curve, then honesty is subsumed beneath a higher value: "Provocation." Sometimes the truth is dull, or politically marginal. At those times, being honest and being provocative conflict. And we've seen which Sullivan chooses when pressed. It makes him, to be sure, a fun and interesting writer. One I rather like to read. But it doesn't leave him in a position to throw stones at the integrity of others.

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None of this is to say that Andrew Sullivan is wrong when he writes (from your quote):
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The suspension of the independent exercise of American judgment about what best serves our interests as well as those of Israelis and Arabs has caused the Arabs to lose confidence in the United States as a peace partner.

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It is unfortunate for Andrew Sullivan, engaged news consumers and the state of American political discourse, however, that he himself has been one of the clearest examples of that "suspension of the independent exercise of American judgment" one can find:
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But what the terrorists are also counting on is that Americans will not have the stomach for the long haul. They clearly know that the coming retaliation will not be the end but the beginning. And when the terrorists strike back again, they have let us know that the results could make the assault on the World Trade Center look puny. They are banking that Americans will then cave. They have seen a great country quarrel to the edge of constitutional crisis over a razor-close presidential election. They have seen it respond to real threats in the last few years with squeamish restraint or surgical strikes. They have seen that, as Israel has been pounded by the same murderous thugs, the United States has responded with equanimity. They have seen a great nation at the height of its power obsess for a whole summer over a missing intern and a randy Congressman. They have good reason to believe that this country is soft, that it has no appetite for the war that has now begun. They have gambled that in response to unprecedented terror, the Americans will abandon Israel to the barbarians who would annihilate every Jew on the planet, and trade away their freedom for a respite from terror in their own land.

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How can Sullivan possibly write about America's reputation for honest brokerage of peace between third parties being harmed by a "suspension of independent judgment" with a straight face, given his enraged, absolute condemnation of a policy in which "the United States has responded with equanimity"?
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One has to wonder why you would choose to include Andrew Sullivan in a piece on the prospects for middle east peace, much less describe this person as a "very reliable source", Joe Klein.
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One gets the idea that, at least in your lexicon, the true meaning of "very reliable source" is "one who very reliably agrees with whatever Joe Klein believes at the moment".
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Was there really nobody more "reliable" than Andrew Sullivan that could be quoted for this piece, Joe Klein?
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Or, like much of the mainstream American press corps' less engaged audience, are you simply never exposed to the work of those who have been truly and reliably correct about foreign policy for the past eight years?
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Thank you for reading and considering this commentary, Joe Klein.

There is quite a to do at The Washingtonnote where Mr Freeman's son and Bush office holder entered a spirited defence of his father and undertook to punch certain detractors in the face. The comments section is a hoot. What surprised me is one commenter saying that American Jews have spent time in the Israel Army but have not served in the US Army. I read somewhere that Jeff Goldberg and Rahm the Man have also served with Isreal's armed forces. No wonder our relations with Israel are so complex, complicated and looks to a lot of people like being one-sided in favour of Israel.

On the point about Mr Freeman's Saudi connections: have those who take this up with vigour have a comment about the Bush-Baker connection with the Saudi Royal family via the Carlyle Group? There is a delightful picture of Bush 43 holding the hands of the Saudi King. Did they object to the tons of cash, now mostly disappeared, poured into Citigroup by Saudi princes?

The only DOW stock that has not fallen is Hypocrisy.

bitterpill
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And don't forget Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador's role in our run up to the war in Iraq. There are allegations that he was allowed to see top secret information specifically marked that foreign agents were not allowed to see it. And it supposedly was Rumsfield with Bush and Cheney in the room who let him see it. But nobody cares about that right? IOKIYAR rules again

Why is it all of Freeman's advocates go to great lengths to change the subject and avoid addressing the many real issues and conflicts of interest that Freeman has which have nothing to do with his views Israel? What do Chinese dissidents or supporters of Tibet have to do with Israel or whatever? I'm not a big fan of the Washington Times, but at least the are covering this. Human Rights Watch is right (see their quote that Freeman is the wrong choice.) That's got nothing to do with Israel.

The Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch said, however, that Mr. Freeman's nomination sends the wrong message.

"A capacity to make moral distinctions may not be a prerequisite for being a good intelligence analyst," Tom Malinowski said. "But for such a high-profile appointment, it would still be wise for President Obama to weigh the message sent by choosing someone who has so consistently defended and worked for the clenched fists the president so eloquently challenged in his inaugural address."

And then the below in today's paper.

Washington Times
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Rights advocates oppose Freeman
Eli Lak

Advocates for Chinese human rights are urging President Obama to reject the nomination of Charles W. "Chas" Freeman Jr. as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, citing Mr. Freeman's defense of the Chinese government's crackdown on democracy activists.

The letter challenges the narrative of many of Mr. Freeman's defenders, who argue that pro-Israel groups have sought to torpedo the nomination because Mr. Freeman has criticized Israeli policies and chaired an educational institution that received Saudi funds.

The 87 signatories of the letter to Mr. Obama include several Chinese citizens who participated in the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananman Square, including Dan Wang, Gang Liu and Danxuan Yi.

"Mr. Freeman has a longstanding record of defending China's authoritarian regime," the letter says. "In his view, for example, China's nationwide democracy movement in spring of 1989, which protested government corruption and embraced international norms of human rights, was only the 'propaganda' of 'dissidents.'"

The Weekly Standard first published an e-mail from Mr. Freeman to a private list server that argued the Chinese government should have acted more swiftly to suppress the nonviolent demonstrations in Beijing in 1989 because of their threat to public order. The Washington Times has not been able to corroborate the e-mail, and Mr. Freeman has not responded to requests for comment.

The Times reported last week that the inspector general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will begin a review of Mr. Freeman's financial ties to Saudi Arabia. Members of Congress last week urged the inspector general to expand that probe to include Mr. Freeman's position on the international advisory board of the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair thus far has stood by the nomination, which his spokeswoman said was made by Mr. Blair without consulting the White House. The review of Mr. Freeman's ties to foreign entities is expected to take about a month.

Mr. Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, senior envoy to China and high-level Pentagon official, has many defenders who say he is extremely well-qualified to supervise the drafting of assessments by the nation's intelligence community.

His son, Charles Freeman, a former trade official for former President George W. Bush, wrote Saturday on the blog Washington Note that while he differed with his father on political issues at times, his father's appointment "is being challenged these days by a small cabal of folks that believe first and foremost in the importance of allegiance to Israel as a core U.S. priority."

He added that his father enjoys provoking controversy and is "scary smart ... a curmudgeon with a stiletto for a mind. He has the capacity to force the intelligence community to begin asking the questions that need to be asked, as opposed to the questions that they think will generate the answers that best suit the political framework that may have generated the question."

tommyvl: No problem with examining Mr Freeman's record. My problem: when Marty Peretz, Kirchik and assorted pro-Israel people get involved and the Weekly Standard leads the charge then I know that something smells bad. We owe China tons of money and we are going to challenge them on Tibet? We have our own Bagrams and Guantanamos. The days of lecturing the Chinese about human rights are over. Those NGOs who are disappointed should know that you can't threaten the guy who holds your promissory notes.
The only thing I know is Marty is leaning so far to the right on his pro-Israeli stance that he is going to fall into the Atlantic. May the currents ensure that he lands on Israel's shore, eventually.

" ..At the same time, there was the rabid opposition of the professional Jewish community ..

There we go again.

JK, we can discuss USA's foreign policy and the pursuit of our foreign policy objectives without predicating it to the whims and whines of foreigners, can't we?

Is the USA, our USA, a colony of Israel - such that we MUST always be mindful of what Israel will condone?

[Gosh! Once upon a time, we, the world' superpower, were in some hostilities with Israel while prosecuting our AMERICAN foreign policy objectives in the Middle East. Israel willfully, and with malice, fired on Americans in the Mediterranean - and killed many. Yes, they killed Americans. Have they paid brutally for it? Apparently not - and hence this ongoing imposition ..

JK, do you suppose that the master-ally relationship would be clearer now (and the Middle East a lot quieter) if the USA, your cherished homeland, would have exerted its power more forcefully then - say by going for "regime change" and eradication of Israel's "hateful ideologies"?]

[I hate this preview in real time ..]

Never heard of the guy until now, but Klein and his links seem to cover the ground nicely. Even dispensing with that, as I loath (thanks, ahithophel) neocons and the destruction they have caused to our country and even to Isreal, there could be no higher recommendation for Freeman than that the neocons don't like him.

Yeah that great bastion of journalism the Washington Times. I wonder if they have figured out whether President Obama is a natural born citizen yet BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH. By the way Joe Klien you can expect a lot of first time commenters today that will blast you and continue to bring up China. It has happened all over the net. Greg Sargent's blog, Spencer Ackerman's blog, hell even on dailykos. I have done my part, hopefully people will actually read the post and the comments and make their mind up for themselves. But somehow every time Freeman's name comes up on a blog, here come the NeoCons who of course claim they are not neocons but concerned Americans

sgw: do you know if Israel and China have an arms sales agreement in place. I know Israel sold arms to South Africa during the apartheid years. I ask because there seems to be an outbreak of concern about China's colonisation of Tibet (which is a sad story of pillage and incorporation); yet at the back of my mind I have this nagging feeling that Israel sells arms to China.

" .. we MUST always be mindful of what Israel will condone? .."

Case in point - USA demographics:

Ethnicity:

German -------------- 15.2%

African Americans ------------- 12.9%

Jewish ---------------------- 2.2%

[Why aren't those who call Germany "cherished homeland" more vocal in how 'german' USA's policy should be?]
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USA, By Religion(non-Christian):

Jewish ------- 1.4%

No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic --------- 8.4%

[Hey, you "no religion" people, wake up! Don't be 'left behind']

Some of the neocons who have bankrupted this country in the name of Israel with their blind support of it - Daniel Pipes, Feith, Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, William Kristol, Seth Lipsky, Martin Peretz, Norman Podhoretz, John Podhoretz, Richard Perle, Richard Cohen, Mortimer Zuckerman, Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Goldberg, Lawrence Kaplan, Charles Krauthammer, David Horowitz, Jonah Goldberg, David Gelernter, Ruth Wisse, David Brooks, Charles Schumer and David Frum.

Confronting the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, JINSA,WINEP, ADL, PNAC , AEI, JDL matters and should be done, now.

It is unacceptable that our leaders are not free to put American interest first for fear of the political reprisals of a foreign nation's lobbyist.

It is unacceptable for the Israel Lobby to falsify, manipulate and color our beliefs of who is our "enemy" and who is our "friend" " by deliberate obstructionism and McCarthyism.

The Israel Lobby to subvert our foreign policy appointees in their supposed interest, at the expense of our real interests, is a clear and present danger to the United States.

We give Israel 10 million dollars a day. That money is funding apartheid and the illegal settlements when we need the money here at home.

Why don't we put it to vote and see how many Americans and world citizens want to continue supporting the world's biggest welfare client, Israel ?

sgwhiteinfla, I was not quoting from the listserv message. I was quoting from the speech Freeman delivered to the SAIS China Forum on October 11, 2006, as you would have seen if you had followed the first link.
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If you had followed the second link, you would have seen that a part of the problem is that Freeman appears to say whatever suits his purposes at the time. Prior to 9/11 he said that the Israel issue had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, but afterward, when serving as a sort of lackey for Saudi Arabia, he blamed al-Qaeda's hatred of us on our support for Israel. That is not "candor," it's opportunism.
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Or, to take the China issue, it's pretty hilarious to read what you posted and then read the speech I cited, where he absolutely denies that China would ever take up arms over Taiwan, or really that the Chinese military would ever act aggressively. It further proves the point that he will bend over backwards to placate authoritarian regimes. You really cannot read the adulatory things he has said of the Saudi rulers and come to any other conclusion.
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And for your information, I don't read the Weekly Standard (and I'm not Jewish, if that interests you). But as I understand it, someone who had been on the listserv sent the message to Michael Goldfarb. He posted it. A listserv is not exactly "private." But in any case this sort of thing happens all the time; remember when liberal Congressional staffers were pulling Republican documents off of a shared computer system and feeding them to the press? And what does that have to do with whether Freeman should be appointed? As we all know, what someone says when he thinks it's a "private" conversation is more representative of his true beliefs.
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What's interesting to me is that many on the left seem to be supporting Freeman for no other reason than because many conservatives oppose him. That's not a very careful thought process. Think what your reaction would be if the person who would be preparing the intelligence Bush read was a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin. This guy has too many alliances to too many authoritarian regimes; can't we find someone better?
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Anyway, I invite you to compare the speech with the text you pasted.

I don't know Freeman except for some of his written stuff. And it is perfectly reasonable to check his record - something that is bring undertaken now. But I find it strange that the fully paid up members of the pro-Israel lobby are leading the charge. Now, if it was a group which was connected to the Dalai Lama or Taiwan it would make sense. But the list of Marty Peretz look alikes who are leading the charge tells me something smells. And it ain't roses.

ahitophel
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Well seeing as how when I clicked your link it went to a "File Not Found" page maybe you could just do us all a favor and cut and paste the text of his "speech". Funny how a lot of "evidence" against Freeman has been disappearing all over the net. Hmmm I wonder why

ahithophel, I don't agree with your take on Freeman but I do appreciate your reasoned evidence-based approach. And you definitely raised some good points that I haven't heard. We need more conservatives to join us in the reality-based community here on Swampland. BTW, I think the same is true of some of the right-wing sites which don't attract reasonable well-informed commenters on the left. The blogosphere has a tendency to segregate along ideological lines, with some sites having rational conservatives and other sites having rational progressives, and few sites attracting both.
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It's nice to read your discussion with SG; last weekend Swampland was dominated by a vehement argument between people who are clustered in the same small area of the political spectrum. At least now there are real substantive disagreements!
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stuart, thanks for that excerpt of Ezra Klein on Sullivan. I think it's amazing on a psychological level how Sullivan can be so wrong so many times and yet be absolutely certain that his new opinions are right.

SG, you just have to delete the ) at the end of the URL.

bitter
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No I don't know about an Israeli/China connection.

Thanks, Rose, for clarifying that about the link. I was trying to figure out why it didn't work for SG. In any case, I agree with you entirely about the division of the net into echo chambers. I came here to make a post a few weeks ago, and most of the responders seemed incensed at me, but a few appreciated having a different perspective presented in, I hope, something resembling rational argumentation. After that, I committed to coming here periodically, rather than hanging out entirely in places where everyone agrees. I think we're duty-bound to seek out the most persuasive expressions on both sides of the issue, so I thought I should walk the walk.
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What concerns me even more is that we no longer just disagree on the interpretation of facts, but liberals and conservatives seem to be constructing entirely different visions of what the facts are--and I think the division of "news" sources into conservative and liberal is partly responsible for this. People, conservatives or liberals, should not just be given the information that agrees with their viewpoint. If we can't agree what "reality-based" means, it's hard to see how we can make progress on how to respond to reality.
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And yes, the conservative sites I frequent tend to draw liberals who are, I think, fairly young, and more interested in sloganeering and name-calling. It only does a disservice to their side (as immature conservatives do for us with their trollish responses on sites like this).