Here’s a head scratcher for you: Why in the world has Barack Obama nominated retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper to be the next director of national intelligence?

Number one, he’s not a civilian, and it sure would be nice to have a non-uniformed person in charge of intelligence, especially as the Pentagon keeps encroaching onto this turf.

But this bureaucratic argument doesn’t concern me nearly so much as the fact that Clapper ran the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency for Bush and Cheney from 2001 to 2006.

In the lead-up to the Iraq War, Clapper disseminated so-called intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

He was sure Saddam had some.

And even worse, he tried selling the most neocon argument of all: that Saddam had “unquestionably” funneled some of those weapons over to Syria, and that’s why we never found any of them. (See a great piece on firedoglake about this)

This long-discredited claim somehow hasn’t discredited Clapper.

It should have. Especially for Obama, who had the good sense to oppose the Iraq War.

Now he has the bad sense to nominate Clapper, a Cheneyite!

Please hold the applause.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.