Remember The ...

Larison's final throughts on Freeman:

In the end, this has been a contestation of power, and the defenders of the status quo won and actually won pretty easily. For all of the pleasant ideas about a changing political landscape and the rise of alternative voices in the debate over U.S. policy in the Near East, all it took to sink a non-confirmable intelligence appointment who had the full confidence of the Director of National Intelligence was a couple of weeks of public whining by a band of petulant, ill-informed hacks. Some may still think about this episode in the days to come, but on the whole “we” will forget, and that is perhaps the most depressing thing about it. The controversy will not elicit a backlash, but will instead change nothing.

And that is the point: no change, no new ideas, no re-thinking.