Dennis Blair

That's the question that one must ask after reading this report from the Atlantic's Max Fisher:

Let us give Barack Obama credit, on those all too rare occasions, when credit is due. The sacking of Dennis Blair is one of his finer moves in national security. It stands in stark contrast to one of George W. Bush’s most consequential lapses.

Now that Dennis Blair has officially resigned from his post, Obama officials are scrambling to find a new director of national intelligence (DNI). But why bother?

A newly released Department of Defense report on the Iranian military threat is getting a lot of attention because it says Iran may have ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S. by 2015. It is understandable that this part of the assessment has gotten so much notice. It clearly contradicts what the Obama administration was saying just several months ago. But there is more to the report, which was submitted to Congress as required by the National Defense Authorization Act and details the “current and future military strategy of Iran.”

Namely, the DoD has confirmed, once again, that the Iranians are in the business of waging a proxy war against America and her allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply put, the Iranians are in the business of killing Americans.

The man who asked Chas Freeman to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Dennis Blair is the subject of an important piece by James Kirchick in the new issue of The New Republic. In addition to the Freeman failure, Blair’s other problems include: An unworkable relationship with the C.I.A., a history of ignoring orders from above, and (the biggest problem) the responsibility of the massive failure that allowed the 'panty bomber,' Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, onto a U.S.-bound airplane on Christmas Day.

A former intelligence officer called my attention to the, as he put it, "creepy" statement Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair issued yesterday: