There’s a lot of buzz in the conservative media about Chas Freeman, who recently withdrew from consideration to head the National Intelligence Council. Did his comments on Tibet play a part (or was it all the Israel lobby?)

In Freeman’s world, those who protest against such human rights tragedies simply have over-active imaginations. In remarks made in March 2007 he noted that “those who wish America to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy can always find one worthy of our attention there. China has become a screen on which Americans can project both our reveries and our nightmares.” And those who speak out in support of the rights of the Tibetan minority are wasting their time because “Chinese proponents of Tibetan independence are rarer than British advocates of discarding Wales.”

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