Chas Freeman won’t be heading the National Intelligence Council, and if you weren’t sure that is a good decision please take a look at his angry and spectatcularly self-serving note explaining why he withdrew. Apparently, he seems to believe that the barrage of criticism he endured is ipso facto evidence the entire country isn’t capable of making sound political decisions:

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.

Though the primary strike against Freeman always seemed to be that he was pro-Saudi, if you were concerned he might be irrationally anti-Israel, he certainly goes a long way to validating that criticism here:

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.

A quick thought experiment — do a find and replace in the above paragraph substituting the word ‘lobby’ with ‘conspiracy.’ That seems much closer to Freeman’s intent and true to the overall tone, no? On that score, those Israel-enablers at Human Rights Watch who also opposed Freeman’s NIC nomination must have been compromised by the Mossad. And as for those embarassing quotes and speeches that kept surfacing from Freeman’s past, well, context is everything:

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Not interested in rebuttal? Oh, I’d be very interested in hearing the logic behind Freeman’s mash note to Mao Zedong, why he thought that Saudi Arabia had been more “introspective” than America in the wake of 9/11, how a Sunni-Shia rift in Iraq is nothing to worry about, or in what ways the the Chinese Politburo was “overly cautious” in responding to the Tiananmen square protests. In fact, now that he’s not going to be at the NIC he should have plenty of time to explain himself. How about it, Chas?

Of all the reasons why Freeman was a bad choice for a sensitive intelligence post, an obdurate lack of self-awareness might ultimately be the most compelling argument against him.