Jonah Goldberg:
I’ve never been a fan of Chuck Hagel. I never thought he’d make a good secretary of defense. But this line from a “senior U.S. official” is just awful:
“Make no mistake, Secretary Hagel was fired,” a senior U.S. official with close knowledge of the situation told Fox News.
This same official discounted Pentagon claims it was a mutual decision claiming President Obama has lost confidence in Hagel and that the White House had been planning to announce his exit for weeks.
“The president felt he had to fire someone. He fired the only Republican in his cabinet. Who is that going to piss off that he cares about?”
In a swipe at the resume of Hagel, who served as U.S. Army sergeant in Vietnam and received two Purple Hearts, the official added, “This is why you don’t send a sergeant to do a secretary’s job.”
What’s wrong with these people? Was the Gruber fiasco not enough? Hagel was ill-suited for the job for lots of reasons, but the fact that he was an enlisted man who served in combat wasn’t one of them.