Another Obama foreign policy advisor

Gabriel Schoenfeld reports on the latest Obama foreign policy adviser who

turns out not to like Israel very much. Add Joseph Cirincione to the list

that includes Samantha Power, Robert Malley, Merrill McPeak, Zbigniew

Brzezinski , and his spiritual adviser Jeremiah Wright. (Obama, of course,

loves Israel; he's just unlucky with his advisers). Last September, in response to reports that the site in Syria that Israel

bombed was a potential nuclear facility being established with the help of

North Korea, Cirincione insisted that the site was no such thing. "This

story is nonsense," Obama's adviser on nuclear threats told Foreign Policy

magazine's blog.



And not just ordinary nonsense. According to Cirincione, the reports were

the product of two nefarious, agenda-driven groups: (1) Bush administration

hardliners seeking to derail "the U.S.-North Korean agreement" and (2)

Israelis who "want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria."



As with Samantha Power, the number one problem with Obama taking advice from

Cirincione is not his view of Israel; it's that he's a fool. As Schoenfeld

notes, the fact of North Korean involvement in the development of a Syrian

plutonium plant appears indisputable; indeed, the evidence now includes

videos taken inside the facility before it was destroyed. Yet Cirincione

dismissed the reports out-of-hand because he didn't like the implications,

including the adverse implications for Israel's longstanding enemy, Syria.

In essence, Cirincione committed precisely the offense he accused the Bush

administration and the Israelis of -- reaching a conclusion of fact based on

an agenda, rather than the evidence.



It's rather frightening to think that Obama has turned for advice on nuclear

matters to someone this grotesquely paranoid about our government and about

the Israelis.