The kind of reporting you won't see in the slavish MSM

The Wrong Man For The Job
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Friday, February 27, 2009 4:20 PM PT
National Security: Imagine one of China's and Saudi Arabia's mouthpieces in America writing intelligence reports for the White House. Meet Chas Freeman, who will soon fill all three roles.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair has named Freeman to head his council of advisers, an influential post that, regrettably, does not require Senate confirmation.
As National Intelligence Council chairman, Freeman will serve as a key intelligence adviser to President Obama and will prepare his daily briefings and the all-important National Intelligence Estimate on foreign threats.

Chas Freeman, right, shakes hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao, left, at a reception in Washington on April 20, 2006. Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Freeman has been tapped as head of President Obama's National Intelligence Council, but has come under withering criticism for his close ties to the Saudis and for taking the side of China's regime after Tiananmen.
The job demands an uncompromising objectivity that Freeman can't possibly deliver, given his conflicts of interest involving two nations potentially hostile to the U.S.
Freeman for years has showed an almost slavish zeal in defending Riyadh and Beijing from well-deserved criticism. This has undermined Israel and Taiwan, both key American allies.
A former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Freeman heads the Saudi-funded Middle East Policy Council, an influential organ for the kingdom. In that role, he has missed few chances to bash Israel.
In 2007, he said the chief reason America was a terror target was its tacit support for "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its 40th anniversary." In another speech that year, he scolded the U.S. for backing "Israel's efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations."
His position on Afghanistan? Let the Taliban run it again, a burning desire of his Saudi patrons, who originally funded and recognized the fundamentalist Taliban regime.
Freeman does business with the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia, and in the weeks after 9/11 he didn't even consider halting his dealings with them. Through his firm, Projects International Inc., he continued discussing proposals with the bin Ladens, who also contribute heavily to the Middle East Policy Council.
Freeman also co-chairs the U.S. China Policy Foundation, part of the pro-China lobby. His son works for the China Alliance, which advises clients on China trade.
The elder Freeman, who once worked at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, apologized for the communist regime's bloody crackdown on young Tiananmen demonstrators. If anything, it was "overly cautious," he said, ignoring how the Beijing butchers turned the pro-democracy students into human paste with their tanks.
"I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government," he added.
Never mind if "normal" means communist police state.
Freeman also would let Beijing annex democratic Taiwan. "My own view is that reunification would be very beneficial for all concerned," he told China's official state organ, the People's Daily. "It would remove the only potential cause of conflict between the U.S. and China."
That's his new boss's attitude, too. Blair once called Taiwan the "turd in the punch bowl" of U.S.-China relations.
"China's proposal for reunification would leave Taiwan's armed forces intact and continue to make them, rather than the People's Liberation Army, primarily responsible for Taiwan's defense," Freeman said. "The PLA would not garrison Taiwan.
"As I understand it," he added, "the Chinese proposal would allow Taiwan to continue to choose its own leaders through elections, and would not assign any government personnel to the island from the mainland. Taiwan's newly democratized political system would not be affected by reunification."
The Politburo could not have said it better. Truth is, the PLA has a stated goal of military and political hegemony in Asia. It's called the "Island Chain Strategy." Perhaps Freeman should read it.
Both Freeman and Blair want to return to the Clinton administration's Chinese "engagement" policy. Freeman served as Clinton's assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs before leaving to lobby for China.
It's no coincidence that a PLA general used him to deliver a thinly veiled threat to the White House over Taiwan, warning that the U.S. risks a Chinese nuclear strike if it intervenes in a conflict between China and Taiwan.
Freeman also apologized for Beijing's clumsy influence-buying during the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, arguing that it was simply trying to compete with the Taiwan lobby.
Blair says the country is fortunate to have Freeman contributing his "remarkable skills toward further strengthening the intelligence community's analytical process."
We're just not sure how pandering to foreign dictators is a worthy analytical skill.