Chuck Hagel

[President Bush]

"I think all 100 senators ought to be on the line on this. What do you believe? What are you willing to support? What do you think? Why were you elected? If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes..."


... A former army sergeant who was awarded two Purple Hearts as an infantry squad leader in the Vietnam War, Hagel has lately been cast by the White House as a military dove.

''When I hear, on both sides of this argument, impugning motives and patriotism to our country, not only is it offensive and disgusting but it debases the whole system of our country and who we are,'' said Hagel. ''My goodness. Can't we debate the most critical issue of our time, out front, in front of the American people? They expect it. Are we so weak, we can't do that?''

Hagel's emotion reflects the heightened sensitivity among U.S. lawmakers to accusations Congress did not properly scrutinize White House policy either before the March 2003 invasion or after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

''I'm to blame. Every senator who's been here the last four years has to take some responsibility for that,'' said Hagel, who is weighing a potential presidential bid. ''Maybe I'll be wrong (on Iraq). And maybe I have no political future. I don't care about that.''

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/w...b4dd80-8c65-4f91-b882-e615df49d1dd&k=5160&p=1

I wish this guy would make up his mind.

 

[headscratcher4]

He hates America and wants the embolden the Terrorists. He wants Omaha to fall to the Talliban.

 

[davefoc]

Will Hagel pay a political price for his independence?

For the last six years Bushco has kept the Republicans in congress under control by looking the other way at their pork, by controlling the purse strings of the Republican Party election funds, by controlling to some degree who gets high paid lobbyist jobs after their tenure is over and by playing a role in the selection of congressional leadership.

Doesn't any of this matter any more? Is the president so weakened politically that he no longer is able to muster significant pressure on a congressman to keep him in line or is Hagel at the point where he doesn't care about this anymore, he's just going to do what he thinks is right and let the chips fall where they may?

One cynical view here is that Hagel is doing exactly the right thing for his presidential candidacy. The leading Republicans candidates are still roughly pro-war, if a dark horse has got a shot he needs to take some positions that differentiate him and hope that the mainstream pro war Republicans divide their support up between the leading candidates which leaves open the chances for a dark horse to make it through the primaries.

 

[davefoc]

Here's an interview of Hagel in GQ magazine that I happened across:
http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_5326

A few sections from the interview:

Do you wish you’d voted differently in October of 2002, when Congress had a chance to authorize or not authorize the invasion?
Have you read that resolution?
I have.
It’s not quite the way it’s been framed by a lot of people, as a resolution to go to war. That’s not quite what the resolution said.
It said, “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.”
In the event that all other options failed. So it’s not as simple as “I voted for the war.” That wasn’t the resolution.

It wasn’t specific to Iraq?
Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.
They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East?
Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.

And producing a National Intelligence Estimate that turned out to be doctored.
Oh yeah. All this stuff was doctored. Absolutely. But that’s what we were presented with. And I’m not dismissing our responsibility to look into the thing, because there were senators who said, “I don’t believe them.” But I was told by the president—we all were—that he would exhaust every diplomatic effort.

The interview is very detailed and credible. It provides a lot of insight into how this country got into such an ill conceived war.

And you feel like you were misled?
I asked tough questions of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld before the war: How are you going to govern? Who’s going to govern? Where is the money coming from? What are you going to do with their army? How will you secure their borders? And I was assured every time I asked, “Senator, don’t worry, we’ve got task forces on that, they’ve been working, they’re coordinated,” and so on.
Do you think they knew that was false?
Oh, I eventually was sure they knew. Even before we actually invaded, I had a pretty clear sense of it—that this administration was hell-bent on going to war in Iraq.