Hagel confirmation hearing discussion - video link

[Tax the Fed]

Former senator Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama’s choice to be secretary of defense faced testy and skeptical questions
from Republicans during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday.
At one point the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s 2007 surge of U.S. troops into Iraq became the heated focus of the hearing.

Hagel also pledged that he would “ensure our friend and ally Israel maintains its Qualitative Military Edge in the region
and will continue to support systems like Iron Dome, which is today saving Israeli lives from terrorist rocket attacks.”

See video at :
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/31/16790696-republicans-press-hagel-on-iraq-iran-and-nuclear-arsenal?lite

[tsai3904]

From an editor of The Washington Post:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran ‏@rajivwashpost
At Hagel hearing, 136 mentions of Israel and 135 of Iran. Only 27 refs to Afghanistan. 2 for Al Qaida. 1 for Mali.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran ‏@rajivwashpost
And not a single mention of drones

[dillo]

If i was hagel i would call these traitors out

[Lucille]

@rajivwashpost More from the Hagel hearing word counter: China--5 Army--7 Veterans--27 Sanctions--68

I've been reading McCarthy (https://twitter.com/ToryAnarchist)'s tweets:

@ToryAnarchist Today's Hagel spectacle was about the demand of the most extreme foreign-policy ideologues in the GOP for absolute control and conformity.

This hearing illustrates how far the GOP hasn't come on foreign policy since 2006. If you don't want war, this isn't the party for you.

You can be the party of William Kristol's foreign policy, or you can be a party that wins the White House again. You can't be both.

This Senate hearing is like a Maoist self-criticism session.

GOP foreign policy has grown crazier than even under Bush b/c now it's utterly symbolic & insubstantial. Bush had to face some reality.

How about we just have a Secretary of Israel? Let the Secretary of Defense deal with the rest of the world.

I'm learning from these senators that Iran is a global superpower, America is as weak as 1930s Belgium, and Hagel is a lifelong pacifist. [LOL]

He's not a fan of Lee or Cruz, at all.

Does Mike Lee think the Secretary of Defense might have responsibilities beyond having opinions about Israel?

Mike Lee is up. What are his Tea Party priorities in the hearing? Israel.

Ted Cruz is the sleaziest man in the Senate. Quite a distinction.

Ted Cruz is up, so get ready for a pack of misrepresentations.

[Lucille]

Some Hagel Reax
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/some-hagel-reax/


The Hagel hearings are quite the window into the hawkish wing (that is, the largest wing) of the GOP. I think Hagel has done well in recognizing that complex answers would not serve him well here, so he has tried to rope a dope rather than explain. [...]

Israel, Israel, Israel. Most of the GOPers, plus Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, asked more questions about Israel than all the other nations of the world combined. It’s really a kind of fanaticism–of a sort which could not have been imagined 20 years ago. I would explain this intensity as a reaction to Israel’s decline in moral standing thoughout the Western world; because the special relationship, or the general idea that Israel is a peace-seeking and democratic state is now increasingly doubted, it must be defended with ever growing intensity. Still it’s an embarrassment–that this is presented to all the world as the highest deliberative political body in the United States.

[Brett85]

I wonder how Rand will end up voting on this.

[vita3]

From an editor of The Washington Post:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran ‏@rajivwashpost
At Hagel hearing, 136 mentions of Israel and 135 of Iran. Only 27 refs to Afghanistan. 2 for Al Qaida. 1 for Mali.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran ‏@rajivwashpost
And not a single mention of drones

The Senate Arms Committe by-large is EVERYTHING that is wrong w/ our Gov & it's so obvious they are controlled by AIPACish interests first & foremost

They are a disgrace to the honest American Taxpayer, paying for the MIC

[Lucille]

Obama doesn't have to “drive a stake through (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/334718/krauthammers-take-obama-wants-drive-stake-through-gop-fiscal-cliff-deal-nro-staff)” the heart of the GOP. The neo-Trots have destroyed it from within. The party lost its FP credibility due to the Bush disasters and instead of admitting they were wrong, they doubled down yesterday.

Senate Republicans Squandered a Big Opportunity Yesterday to Help Their Party
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/senate-republicans-squandered-a-big-opportunity-yesterday-to-help-their-party/


Republican hard-liners have contributed to their party’s defeats in three of the last four elections, and they inflicted long-term damage on their party’s reputation on foreign policy by embracing the biggest foreign policy blunder in a generation, and now they are furious with Hagel because he’s one of the few national Republicans to recognize reality. McCain’s obsession with insisting on the rightness of the “surge” that failed on the Bush administration’s own terms is one example of this refusal to cope with reality.

If it were just McCain doing this, we could dismiss it as part of a long pattern of his embittered reactions to past political defeats. The amazing thing is that virtually every Republican member of the committee yesterday pretended to be just as incensed and outraged by Hagel as McCain was. Four of the Republican members are new Senators elected in 2010 or last year, and in some respects the new members were worse than McCain in trying to prove their hard-line credentials. Senate Republicans had an opportunity yesterday to demonstrate that they had learned something from the failures of the Bush era and the folly of hard-line policies, and they threw it away without giving it a moment’s thought.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/are-ted-cruz-and-marco-rubio-out-of-touch-with-latino-soldiers/


If money talks, military personnel have made their preferences on war clear. Ron Paul received the most in campaign contributions from military personnel until March 2012, when Obama began taking in more. By election time the president had received nearly twice as much as Mitt Romney. Given the military’s historical tendency to lean Republican, that’s a pretty striking number. It’s been widely reported that the officer corps has deep reservations about an attack on Iran, and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said one by either Israel or the United States would be “catastrophic.”

The remarkable shift away from Republicans could be due to many things. But given the similarities between both 2012 candidates on most things besides war, and the fact that the military is the subset of the population most affected by it, it stands to reason that that foreign policy is the main issue military personnel part ways with the GOP.

[Bastiat's The Law]

Hagel didn't do himself any favors. He looked incompetent rapidly getting punched in the face.