REMEMBER CHAS FREEMAN? HE WAS AN OBAMA NOMINEE TO HEAD NATIONAL INTEL COUNCIL…
FROM HIS RECENT SPEECH TO NATIONAL COUNCIL ON US ARAB RELATIONS….
Remember Chas Freeman who was nominated to be Director of National Intelligence Council – and had to withdraw his name because “Freeman’s financial, personal and business ties with the governments of China and Saudi Arabia have also been called into account. He was president of the Middle East Policy Council, which received some funding from the Saudi government, and he is on the international board of advisers to a Chinese-government owned oil company. The congressional complaints resulted in an inspector general’s investigation into Freeman’s ties to the Saudi government.”
But, of course, he blamed the opposition to his appointment on supporters of Israel – some of whom had expressed concern because of Freeman’s statements which were hostile to Israel – but which were not raised in his confirmation hearing. See below, an excerpt from his recent speech at the National Council on US Arab Relations:
“…There is nothing at all ambiguous or unclear about these explanations of 9/11 by its planners and perpetrators. Few abroad dispute their essential validity. Yet here in America, they remain completely unreported outside the Internet. Any public reference to U.S. backing for Israel as a grievance that motivated the atrocities in New York and Washington eight years ago is vigorously disputed and suppressed as politically incorrect. This has created a large national blind spot to the seriousness of Arab Muslim reaction to a core American policy. It has left our country unable effectively to analyze the very real threat to our domestic tranquility that intermittent terrorist attacks represent. By leaving terrorist attacks on the United States and Americans abroad unexplained and disconnecting them from the trends and events in the Middle East that helped inspire them, this self-imposed mental block has distorted our threat perceptions and greatly hampered the development of a realistic national security strategy….
The 9/11 assault on the United States was carried out by Muslim extremists motivated in large measure by their resentment of U.S support for Israel and its actions. The need to avenge 9/11 and deter a repetition of it led directly to the American invasion of Afghanistan. The so-called “global war on terrorism” that this invasion inaugurated provided a spurious but politically sufficient justification for the occupation of Iraq in 2003. Our labeling of Hamas as a “terrorist organization” inspired the joint U.S.-Israeli effort to reject and overturn the results of the 2006 elections in the occupied territories, even though these elections were universally judged to be free and fair. A similar view of Hezbollah caused the U.S. to encourage Israel in its savage mauling of Lebanon and to protect it from the huge international backlash against its more recent assault on Arab civilians in Gaza
“…. Meanwhile, the insolent cruelties of the West Bank occupation and the siege of Gaza continue to inflame Arab and Muslim opinion.Taken together, these developments have caused a growing number of Arabs and Muslims to posit a broad American crusade to humiliate them and their religion…
What began as a conflict between Jewish colonists and indigenous Arabs has become a worldwide struggle between Jews, Muslims, and their respective allies
“…The current government of Israel rejects trading land for peace. It sees itself as on the verge of achieving a level of colonization of Palestinian Arab land that will make anything resembling a Palestinian state physically impossible. In the exclusively Jewish state of Israel that its leading figures envisage, only Jews will be full citizens. Some Arabs will have limited rights but most will live in an archipelago of checkpoint-ringed ghettos. They will be free, should they wish, to call these ghettos a “state” but once they leave Palestine, Israel will not allow them to return. Given this Israeli vision, the American attempt to arrange a settlement freeze so that negotiations can create a Palestinian state is, from the Israeli government point of view, at best an unwelcome distraction and at worst a hostile act. Mr. Netanyahu does not fear pressure from the United States to change course. He is confident that his American lobby will arrange for Congress to punish the president if the president tries to punish Israel for its intransigence….”
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