Meet Bruce Ridel: an analyst by day and a medical doctor by night

"“The weight of the evidence I have seen is that he was more injured in the assassination attempt than was admitted and that he then got onto a pain killer routine that was very addictive,” said Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution. “I think that problem got progressively worse.”"  I started to notice this guy back in the 1990s, when in an interview with Middle East Quarterly he said that the Arab people are not bothered by the US-impoised sanctioned on Iraq.  I said to myself: this is a clueless analyst and you need to pay attention to him.  Here, he is using his medical training to offer a medical opinion on a purely medical case: on whether Bin Nayif was or is addicted to painkillers.  When he says he has "seen" the evidence, what does that mean? Was he made to watch as Bin Nayif popped pills? Or was he offered a video in which Bin Nayif was seen buying a large amount of drugs?  DC Punditry is now worse on many levels (professional and ethical) than US journalism.  At least Reuters in the report on the succession today was reserved and said that it could not judge whether bin Nayif was addicted or not.