"they might as well have appointed Bandar..."

More on Chas Freeman in the Atlantic, here

"...This is a profoundly disturbing appointment, if the report is correct. Freeman is a strident critic of Israel, and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time the state of Israel was born. His views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship, not the top CIA position for analytic products going to the President of the United States.A well-placed pro-Israel source says there's "no amount of good will" that would soften reaction to that appointment because "they might as well have appointed Bandar."