Chas Freeman out as NIC head

Best thing I heard today besides the Dow rising nearly 400 points was the news that Charles "Chas" Freeman withdrew his name for the National Intelligence Commitee post. Unless Obama scrapes harder at the bottom of the barrel, it'll be hard to find someone worse than him for that position.

This post over at Yid With Lid details just how bad he'd have been. He's done his research on Freeman well, and posts two contradictory quotes from Freeman on the "root causes" of terrorism. Here's a Freeman quote from 2004:

The heart of the poison is the Israel-Palestinian conundrum. When I was in Saudi Arabia, I was told by Saudi friends that on Saudi TV there were three terrorists who came out and spoke. Essentially the story they told was that they had been recruited to fight for the Palestinians against the Israelis, but that once in the training camp, their trainers gradually shifted their focus away from the Israelis to the monarchy in Saudi Arabia and to the United States. So the recruitment of terrorists has a great deal to do with the animus that arises from that continuing and worsening situation.

And here's his self-contradictory view from 1998:

Mr. bin Laden's principal point, in pursuing this campaign of violence against the United States, has nothing to do with Israel. It has to do with the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, in connection with the Iran-Iraq issue. No doubt the question of American relations with Israel adds to the emotional heat of his opposition and adds to his appeal in the region. But this is not his main point.

Do people change their opinions? Sure they do. But it's far more likely in this case that Freeman was merely parroting the Saudi line after receiving a generous donation from the Saudi royal family for his Middle East Policy Council. Read the whole thing and I think you'll agree.

H/T Hot Air headlines.