Let us give Barack Obama credit, on those all too rare occasions, when credit is due. The sacking of Dennis Blair is one of his finer moves in national security. It stands in stark contrast to one of George W. Bush’s most consequential lapses.
Whatever Blair’s accomplishments in office, they were overshadowed by his failures. From the outset, he displayed poor judgment with his abortive February 2009 appointment of former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles “Chas” Freeman, as the nation’s top intelligence analyst. Freeman was pushed to withdraw after some of his wingnut views were aired in the press (including by me in the Wall Street Journal) and became an embarrassment to the White House. Among other things, Freeman had contended that China’s “response to the mob scene at ‘Tiananmen’ [stood] as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership.”
