Am I the only one confused...

One interesting point per NPR this morning. Panetta (a Dem) was approved easily by Senate Republicans

Wow... Astounding...

And John McCain is still fighting the unnecessary, unpaid-for Iraq War, and the unnecessary "surge"... Imagine my surprise...

http://freebeacon.com/hagels-7-worst-mo ... round-one/

Got to actually watch the testimony last night and poor Chuck looked out of his element and confused. He may be a war hero, but to me last night, he just looked like an old man who wasn't all there.

Maybe Barack needs to find someone else. There are going to be some major challenges for the US military with sequestration and the Middle East coming up and Senator Hagel looks like the wrong man to handle it.

Yes, it was so important to pull out-of-context phrases out of 13-year-old speeches to try to play "gotcha." And I'm still wondering what they hoped to accomplish by trying to beat him up over a report that says the 20th-century stockpile of nuclear warheads (which are virtually obsolete, in terms of tactical usefulness and advantage in the 21st-Century), are not all that important.

But you have to give the GOP credit... They regurgitated their talking-points, (irrelevant though most of them may be), like good little soldiers. One of them was even stupid enough to quote something about Hagel being a "favorite" of the Iranian government...(Actually, the Iranian government didn't say that...Drudge Report did... So, it's enlightening to see that the GOP still thinks quoting the neo-con blogosphere and talk-shows is a substitute for intelligence.)

He'll be confirmed, and then they can go back to being outraged about something else. Maybe when the sequester cuts the military budget by as much as it's going to, they'll get motivated to do something besides trying to find a way to manufacture a crisis every 3 months. (That worked so well for them in the last four years.)

Yes, agreeing with an Al Jazzeera reporter that the US is a bully is just the man we need to run the Defense Department.

But since LJ thinks the US is a bully she has no problem with Chuck's words. She probably also like his no nukes policy. Not no nukes for Iran, Senator Hagel thinks the US needs to retire their nuclear weapons. Sounds pretty extreme to me.

Yes, and since that remark was taken out-of-context, and doesn't mean what they tried to make it sound like, I'm really under-whelmed... What?!?!?! Edited sound-clips? Creatively edited quotes? From REPUBLICANS? Imagine my surprise! I'm SHOCKED, I tell you, shocked!

It never was a "no nukes" policy, and isn't one now. But as a regurgitated untrue talking-point, (kind of on the same level for the low-intelligence crowd as "cut and run"), it's a doozie... Too bad, like the rest of the garbage, it's not true.

He agrees with Obama who also thinks America would be better off morally without nuclear weapons. We could really cut defense costs with no boomers, no ICBM's, and no tactical nuclear weapons.

Lying again, Fred... Nobody has said "without"...Nothing has been said about "no nukes"--except by the usual right-wing wackos... But you keep rolling them out there...

I don't know how we'd get by with 4,000 "tactical nukes" instead of 5,000... (Particularly when we are so much more threatened with cyber-security war, people being able to walk around with bombs in suitcases that can cause more damage...) And I'm sure there are contractors out there decrying the fact that we use fewer horses and bayonets, too...

Fred, there are NOT going to be any more bayonet-charges... We'll send in a drone and wipe out their sorry a**es. And the only ones worried about a reduction in the number of warheads, is G.E. (Because they have the contract to supply the warheads...) Let's get real...

FredHayek wrote: Yes, agreeing with an Al Jazzeera reporter that the US is a bully is just the man we need to run the Defense Department.

Gee, are talking about THIS interview with "an Al Jazzeera reporter"?

Cruz smears Chuck Hagel

According to Sen. Ted "Calgary" Cruz (R-TX), defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel isn't just a raging anti-Semite, he's a raging anti-Semite who accused Israel of committing war crimes. Even worse, says Cruz: Hagel did it on Al Jazeera of all places. Yikes.

Cruz leveled his allegation on Thursday afternoon during Hagel's confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Cruz set up his attack by asking permission to play a video clip of Hagel on Al Jazeera in 2009. The topic of the interview from which Cruz pulled the clip was nuclear disarmament, a fact which Cruz conveniently neglected to mention. And the clip itself consisted almost entirely of a question from a viewer who had called in. Of the 78 seconds Cruz played, just 14 were of Hagel.

The clip began with a caller from London delivering a rambling dissertation about how he liked the idea of a world without nuclear weapons, but believed it couldn't happen without leadership. "I believe the current leadership around the world, there is a moral failure going on," said the caller. "For example, if you look at Palestine, there is a war crime, and they are not dealing with it. But in Sudan, there is a war crime, and they are dealing with it."

When the caller turned his attention to genocide in Sri Lanka, the anchor interrupted, hoping to avoid a full-fledged filibuster. "What is your question, then, with regards to the issue we're talking about, the reduction of nuclear weapons?" At that point, faced with getting booted from the air or wrapping up his monologue, the caller asked the most innocuous question ever: "Yes, my question is that there's a total moral failure, and unless you bring these leaders to a moral standard, nothing can be done, that's my question. What do you think about this?"

So what did Hagel say that led Cruz to accuse him of having trashed Israel? This: "Well, I think you're exactly right, in that I said in my opening statement that that leadership is critical because we know that in life nothing is ever accomplished without leadership."

Oooh. What a terrible thing to say. And even though Cruz's clip didn't include it, it turns out that there was even more:

I think it's interesting that the two leaders we're talking about specifically, of Russia and the United States, Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev are both in their 40s, and it represents a new generation of thinking. Now, again, that's a long leap between that thinking and commitment to getting it done, and, again, we're well aware of the difficulties. But we must start somewhere, and that kind of moral leadership as the caller says is absolutely critical. Now, the reality is that we're going to continue to have, unfortunately, conflict in the world.

www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/31/118366...ck-Hagel?showAll=yes


Wow... Ain't "creative editing" a bitch?!? What a terrible thing to say... in context....

THIS IS A JOB for FauxNews!... (Which never disappoints...)