One of the most strident defenses of Chas Freeeman came from Robert Dreyfuss, writing at the Nation. A friend now forwards us a snap of the back cover of Dreyfuss's book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, which features... a blurb from Chas Freeman. Other luminaries who praised the book include Chalmers Johnson and Seymour Hersh. Freeman calls the book "a fluent tour de force," and goes on to talk about America's misguided attempts to "use the Islamic right to Western strategic advantage [that] have helped make political Islam the formidable force it is today." He then goes on to praise Dreyfuss for making the case that the U.S. government -- inadvertently -- "played a central role in building up the forces that struck New York and Washington on 9/11..." It strikes me that no one has done more than Freeman to prop up the "Islamic right," which by my understanding would necessarily include Freeman's client or, as Freeman calls him, King Abdullah the Great. Is it not our support for the Saudi monarchy, perhaps as much as our support for Israel, which provides the ideological fuel for al Qaeda? In any case, surely there is some large reservoir of vile anti-American statements in Dreyfuss's book. Perhaps some reader of ours who has a stronger stomach than I do has leafed through it and can send along the passages that make the Devil's Game such a tour de force. And for extra credit: click here to read our new chair of the National Intelligence Council complain about how the Arabs' "concern about investigation of wire transfers and checks [on] donations generally" was crimping his fundraising -- a situation that was ultimately resolved, Freeman says, by "the generosity of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia."