AIPAC sewage overflows again, may damage the Obama administration

The Charles Freeman withdrawal can be traced, according to Ken Silverstein and Scott Horton and others, to a power-play by the American Israel Political Action Committee (a lobbying PAC this blogger would like to see prosecuted and dissolved -- lotsa luck!).

Freeman, who was to lead the National Intelligence Council, was shot down because he hasn't been showing a suitable amount of prejudice in favor of Israel.  None of us is sure of the required rating -- do you have to be over 95% pro-Israel to survive in Washington or is has the number dropped to, say, a scandalous 94%?  Whatever.  Freeman evidently wanted to play on an even field.  That is just not allowed.  The Obama administration,  though it says it's seeking a more balanced foreign policy, hasn't let us know how it feels about AIPAC's pressure on Freeman to withdraw.

Silverstein has this excerpt from a Daily Beast post.

The assault on Charles “Chas” Freeman Jr., a former ambassador tapped to lead the National Intelligence Council, is the first blow in a battle over the Obama administration’s Middle East policy. Steven Rosen, a former director of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee due to stand trial this April for espionage for Israel, is the leader of the campaign against Freeman’s appointment. In his wake, a host of critics from the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the New Republic’s Marty Peretz have emerged to assail Freeman’s comments on Israeli policies and demand that Obama rescind the diplomat’s appointment. The campaign against Freeman spread to Congress, where a handful of representatives including the top recipient of AIPAC donations, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), called for an investigation of Freeman’s business ties to China and Saudi Arabia.

John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt are two journalists who were excoriated when they published an article suggesting that our foreign policy is overly weighted towards Israel.  They pointed to years of enormous pressure brought to bear on Congress by AIPAC  lobbyists and the habit AIPAC has of labeling anyone supporting a more balanced Middle East policy as "anti-Semitic." 

Scott Horton would like to know how Mearsheimer and Walt are reacting  to this latest example of AIPAC's power.

The whole affaire Freeman seems to be a demonstration of the thesis they advance about how the Israel lobbies work and their hold on dialogue about Middle East policy within the nation’s foreign policy-making elites. Tracking the development of this matter also allows a student to pinpoint the resources that these lobbies wield both within the media and in political circles. Indeed, the argument against Freeman was so obviously devoid of merit (other than the apparently disqualifying claim that he was a critic of the Israeli Government) that it provides a prime test case.

Is this an issue that the Obama administration should be forgiven for not getting tangled in?  Or should we expect a little more change in this as in other areas of our government?