Which I posted here. kleinbl00, I would imagine de Bellaigue's analysis squares more with that of the authors you mentioned. Have you read his book? I've only skimmed it so far.
Incidentally -- I've been backreading FA lately, and though the bias is still present, this piece among others proves that they've definitely grown willing to publish both sides of an issue. Maybe the CFR influence is waning just slightly.
I'm sorry, I'm too busy feeling vindicated to comment. ;-) Haven't read the book. Probably should. I'm knee-deep in The Revenge of Geography and while it's thought provoking, it's also opaque. It's interesting reading the author's response. It's long and prevaricating without really addressing any criticism.
Kaplan got my attention by covering the Iran/Iraq war for five years, then advocating for "Regime Change" against Saddam post 9/11, then saying "whoopsie, screwed the pooch on that one. Where did I go wrong?" He's kind of been soul searching through literature ever since. He's not exactly a neocon, but he sure ain't no bleedin' heart liberal.
I am finding that not even Chrome Incognito, which I use to read the Times, is helping me here. I have two or three more FA articles queued up and I can't fucking read them; it's incredibly frustrating. I also just tried randomly deleting elements of the page's html and it didn't work. Hmm.