No sense of irony at the Weekly Standard

Charles Freeman, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, has been torpedoed as President Obama’s and Admiral Dennis Blair’s choice to head the National Intelligence Council, which prepares national intelligence estimates. Tom Pickering, Ronald Neumann, and 15 other former U.S. ambassadors signed a letter in the Wall Street Journal last week attesting to Freeman’s qualifications for the job.

I don’t know enough of Freeman’s background to have an opinion one way or another, but this Michael Goldfarb post on it sure brought me a laugh:

Greg Sargent has been all over this story (though I would dispute his insistence that opposition to Freeman comes from the “pro-Israel lobby and the neocons,” which leaves out some of Freeman’s most prominent critics like Chait and Goldberg) . . . .

“It’s not just neocons who oppose Freeman,” writes the neocon, “it’s hawkish and/or pro-Israel Jews who work for liberal or mainstream outlets.”

My, what a big tent they’ve got over there at the Standard!

Freeman shows shades of apologism for unpleasant regimes. He wasn’t tapped to create policy, however, and so far as I can tell, he’s never authored policies for a foreign political party.