The Unqualified Radical Nominee For Secretary of Defense…Chuck Hagel

Every day that passes we are finding out more and more about Chuck Hagel, the man Obama has presented to be his Secretary of Defense:

Secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel said Israel is on its way to becoming an apartheid state during an April 9, 2010, appearance at Rutgers University, according to a contemporaneous account by an attendee.

Hagel also accused Israel of violating U.N. resolutions, called for U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hamas to be included in any peace negotiations, and described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “radical,” according to the source.

Kenneth Wagner, who attended the 2010 speech while a Rutgers University law student, provided the Washington Free Beacon with an email he sent during the event to a contact at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The email is time-stamped April 9, 2010, at 11:37 AM.

“I am sitting in a lecture by Chuck Hagel at Rutgers,” Wagner wrote in the email. “He basically said that Israel has violated every UN resolution since 1967, that Israel has violated its agreements with the quartet, that it was risking becoming an apartheid state if it didn’t allow the Palestinians to form a state. He said that the settlements were getting close to the point where a contiguous Palestinian state would be impossible.”

“He said that he [thought] that Netanyahu was a radical and that even [former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi] Livni, who was hard nosed thought he was too radical and so wouldn’t join in a coalition [government] with him. … He said that Hamas has to be brought in to any peace negotiation,” Wagner wrote.

Oh, it gets better. The White House national security adviser, Mr. Tom Donilon, wrote an op-ed in the NYT’s yesterday titled “Hezbollah Unmasked”:

…But the Bulgarian investigation has once again proved to the world what Hezbollah has tried for years to hide: that it remains engaged in international terrorist attacks against civilians.

Hezbollah first gained notoriety in 1983 after bombing the United States Embassy in Beirut — an attack that killed 63 people. Shortly thereafter, Hezbollah bombed the American and French Marine Barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans and 58 French service members with one of the largest explosive devices ever detonated during a terrorist attack.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the group conducted kidnappings and airplane hijackings, two bombings in Buenos Aires, several in Paris and an attempted bombing in Bangkok. In 1996 it assisted in the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 Americans. Thanks to this bloody record, in 1997 Hezbollah was among the first groups added to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Over the last decade, Hezbollah has worked assiduously to obscure its terrorist pedigree and convince the world that it is interested only in politics, providing social welfare services, and defending Lebanon. But it is an illusion to speak of Hezbollah as a responsible political actor. Hezbollah remains a terrorist organization and a destabilizing force across the Middle East.

…Europe must now act collectively and respond resolutely to this attack within its borders by adding Hezbollah to the European Union’s terrorist list. That is the next step toward ensuring that Burgas is the last successful Hezbollah operation on European soil.

So the administration’s position is that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. But Hagel was one of only 12 Senators to refuse to sign a letter urging Europe to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization. This would put a major crimp on their fundraising activities but to Hagel, it doesn’t matter. He apparently believes they are terrorists but they are fighting those evil Israeli’s dontchaknow…so why put a crimp on their style.

He was also one of only 4 Senators to refuse to sign a letter in support of Israel.

And it gets better:

…in 2001, as the PLO waged war against Israel, “Hagel was one of only 11 Senators who refused to sign a letter urging President Bush not to meet with the late Yasir Arafat until his forces ended the violence against Israel.”

In 2005, a group of 27 Senators including Hagel, “refused to sign a letter to President Bush to pressure the Palestinian Authority to ban terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative elections.”

The man’s anti-Israel views are well known and well documented.

Knowing Obama’s dislike for Israel I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that he picked this completeley unqualified man for Defense Secretary and knowing the media’s absolute love for everything Obama it shouldn’t be surprising they are doing their best to turn the argument from the merits of Hagel to the evil of those daring to question him:

Senate Democrats have taken to the New York Times to express their displeasure with their uppity new colleague Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican whose robust examination of Chuck Hagel’s record they find insufficiently decorous. Warning: The “M-word” is used.

“In this country we had a terrible experience with innuendo and inference when Joe McCarthy hung out in the United States Senate, and I just think we have to be more careful,” Senator Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) told the Times. Barbara Boxer echoed the sentiment. “It was really reminiscent of a different time and place, when you said, ‘I have here in my pocket a speech you made on such and such a date,’ and, of course, nothing was in the pocket. . . . It was reminiscent of some bad times.”

The senators were more circumscribed in their analysis than the Democrats’ living id, Chris Matthews, who put it more directly: “I watched him in those hearings and I saw Joe McCarthy.”

… Hagel was asked by a group of six senators, including Cruz, to disclose all compensation he has received in excess of $5,000 over the last five years, on the grounds that payments from foreign groups or ideological groups were relevant to Hagel’s nomination. Hagel refused. He was then asked in a letter by a group of 25 senators for similar information. Hagel replied that he was not legally obligated to turn over that information and thus would not do so. Cruz pointed out that while only two years of such disclosures were required by Senate rules, there was precedent for nominees’ being asked for, and volunteering, more extensive disclosures. Most recently, then-senator Hillary Clinton voluntarily disclosed every foreign donation to the Clinton Foundation as part of her nomination process for secretary of state.

Lamenting that Hagel’s unwillingness to offer a similar level of cooperation left the Senate in the dark about the sources of Hagel’s compensation, Cruz offered a stylized hypothetical. “He could not even say that the $200,000 he received [for speeches and appearances] did not come directly from a foreign government,” Cruz said. “It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.”

Yup, it’s McCarthy all over again. A man daring to ask questions of someone who will have immense power in the defense of this country. Don’t you think it would be in this country’s best interest to know if Hagel received compensation from countries that want to destroy us? That isn’t the least little bit relevent?

Andrew C. McCarthy brings up a good point:

If it is reprehensible “McCarthyism” and “questioning Hagel’s patriotism” for the Senate to probe these matters in connection with a nominee’s qualifications for a position that is second only to the presidency in its significance to our national security, then what are we to make of the executive branch’s use of Form 86? That is the lengthy questionnaire candidates for any governmental national security position — including positions far less consequential than defense secretary — must complete in order to be granted the security clearance required to perform such jobs.

Have a look at the form (here), and in particular at pages 59–83. It is a searching inquiry into every conceivable aspect of the candidate’s connections to and financial entanglements with foreign countries and their agents — and that’s only after similarly exacting questions earlier in the form about the candidate’s family connections to foreign countries and their agents (a topic we discussed back when Democrats, as well as some leading Republicans like Senator John McCain, were making similarly ridiculous “McCarthyism” allegations about inquiries into the Islamist connections of Huma Abedin, top adviser to former Secretary of State Clinton).

The man has denounced Israeli influence peddling, but is all for Iranian influence peddling. So why is it McCarthyism to demand to see who paid him? Hillary disclosed it, why can’t he?

Now that McCain has said there won’t be a filibuster he isn’t worked up enough about it either apparently.

No courage, no character.

The Democrats didn’t care about the “impropriety” of a filibuster when John Bolton was up for a vote some 8 years ago.

The vote we are about to take . . . is about whether the Senate will allow the President to dictate to a co-equal branch of government how . . . to fulfill our constitutional responsibility under the advice and consent clause. It is that basic. I believe it is totally unacceptable for the President of the United States, Democrat or Republican—and both have tried—to dictate to the Senate how he, the president, thinks we should proceed.
-Joe Biden, June 20th, 2005

But not our Republicans. They are easily scared bunch it seems.

And a bunch with no backbone either except for Ted Cruz.

Curt

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