Of course, now that the "pro-Israel" and "anti-China" lobbies have succeeded in derailing this nominee, won't that only set the next nominee up as being biased in their favor? Obama may have dodged this fight, but now opposing parties on the Mideast and China policies will probably be complaining "but of course your guy was handpicked by XXXXX, so he isn't fair." Giving one side in a debate veto power is likely to just make the other sides less likely to take the new candidate seriously. And while this job is more administrative and doesn't deal directly with foreigners much, it will give them ground to criticize future Estimates.

The only important question is whether or not Freeman could have been effective in the job.

When I first heard about this nomination, I figured that it was part of Obama's "Team of Rivals" strategy. It seemed like a good idea to have someone with less than complete support of Israel in the job in order to provide a counterbalance to the pro-Israel group which surrounds the president.

However, after reading his dopey statements to the Arabs in 2006, during which he claimed that US support for Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks, with the concomitant suggestion that it was somehow excusable because of our misguided policies, it became quite clear that this man has no business evaluating intelligence. Criticism of Israel is definitely warranted, but it needs to be to the point, not some kind of generalized nonsense in which Israel is always wrong. That's simply unmitigated Arab propaganda.

Why does this contretemps automatically assure that someone of the opposite point of view will be picked? How about someone with an open mind and the ability to intelligently evaluate situations free from personal antipathy?

The problem with all the ideologues is that they are unable to see anything between the extremes of left and right. If you're not on one side, you must be on the other.

Stupid.