#Hagel on Israel's #nukes

MFS - The Other News: Video - "Israel's Staunchest Allies" - Hagel: "Israel's nukes more of a threat than Iran."

Report: #Hagel Said #Israel Headed Toward #Apartheid, #Netanyahu a ‘Radical’

(Report: Hagel Said Israel Headed Toward Apartheid, Netanyahu a ‘Radical’ | Washington Free Beacon)

BY: Alana Goodman
February 19, 2013 12:51 pm
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.
AIPAC had no comment.
Wagner said the remarks were made during the Q amp;A session. The speech took place at the Rutgers School of Law in Newark.
Wagner, a pro-Israel activist, reiterated the account in an interview with the Free Beacon and called Hagel’s comments “pretty shocking.”
“I was very surprised at his attitude because I had been listening to politicians speak about the situation in the Middle East and the U.S. Israel relationship for about two decades,” Wagner told the Free Beacon. “And it was probably the most negative thing I’d ever heard anybody in elected office say.”
The news of the comments given during the 2010 speech comes at a time when the embattled secretary of defense nominee has been forced to respond to a report that he called the State Department an adjunct of the Israeli foreign ministry during the Q amp;A portion of a 2007 speech at Rutgers.
The Free Beacon reported Thursday on a contemporaneous account of another speech then-Senator Hagel gave at Rutgers in 2007. The report, written by Hagel supporter and political consultant George Ajjan, claimed Hagel had described the U.S. Department of State as an extension of the Israeli government.
Sens. Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte on Friday sent a letter to Hagel requesting an explanation of the alleged comments. The Anti-Defamation League also called on Hagel to explain, and the American Jewish Committee said, “Further Senate deliberation is called for before any final vote is taken.”
Hagel has disavowed the remarks and says he does not recall making them.
“I do not recall making any such statement, or ever making any similar statement,” he wrote in a reply letter to Graham and Ayotte on February 16. “I completely disavow the content of the alleged statement attributed to me.”
According to one of the 2007 event’s organizers, Hooshang Amirahmadi, who is currently running for president of Iran, Ajjan’s account of the 2007 speech is “complete nonsense.”
Amirahmadi told the Free Beacon that some of his “very good Jewish colleagues who are very pro-Israel” did not appear offended at any point during the speech.
The Daily Caller reported on Monday that Amirahmadi accepted funding grants from the Alavi Foundation, which federal law enforcement officials have called a front group for the Iranian regime.
Amirahmadi is also the head of the American Iranian Council, which awarded Hagel an expensive clock in 2002.
Another attendee at the 2007 speech, Rutgers Professor Charles Häberl said he is “certain” Hagel did not say the State Department was an adjunct of the Israeli government, BuzzFeed reported today.
When the Free Beacon contacted Häberl about the 2007 speech last Thursday, he said he was not the best person to talk to about the event.
“Have you been in touch with Hooshang Amirahmadi?” Häberl wrote in an email. “He’s the one who organized the event, and he would be the best situated to talk about it. At the time, I was just a lecturer.”
Meanwhile, Ajjan stood by his account and said he is the only person who has provided a written report from the time.
“If somebody comes out with a transcript and those words aren’t uttered, I’d be the first one to say, ‘My apologies. I wrote something down that was wrong—I misheard it, or I misreported it,’ if that’s the case,” Ajjan told the Washington Free Beacon.
“I’m a conscientious person,” Ajjan said. “When I was blogging at that time, I did my best to record things accurately … there’s no way that I would pick a phrase like ‘adjunct of the Israeli foreign ministry.’ That’s a pretty odd combination of words to use. I wouldn’t have just pulled those out of thin air.”
When asked about Häberl disputing his account, Ajjan said he wants to make it clear he is not trying to undermine Hagel’s confirmation or the Rutgers event. He said he is still a supporter of Hagel.
“I suppose [Häberl] thinks that I’m somehow trying to disparage Chuck Hagel or cast a dark shadow over his confirmation hearings. That’s not the case at all. And I certainly don’t wish to besmirch the people who organized the event,” said Ajjan. “I very much enjoyed the event, I appreciate the people who organized it.”
The Free Beacon is working to obtain transcript and video of Hagel’s comments during the question and answer sessions at Rutgers in both 2007 and 2010, and is continuing to speak to others who attended both events.
A representative for Hagel did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

via freebeacon.com

Time for some more research into what really happened here

#Hagel was brought to #Rutgers by #Khameni supporter

Last week, (Carl) reported on a 2007 Chuck Hagel speech at Rutgers University in whose question and answer session Hagel stated that the US State Department is controlled by Israel. It turns out that there's another interesting story about that speech: Hagel was brought to Rutgers by supporters of Ayatollah Ali Khameni's Iranian dictatorship.

A pro-Hezbollah, pro-Hamas candidate for the Iranian presidency, a man linked to Iranian-controlled front groups, brought former Republican Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel to speak at Rutgers University in 2007, according to another professor on campus.

Hooshang Amirahmadi, who led Rutgers’ Center for Middle Eastern Studies when Hagel came to campus, is the founder and president of the American-Iranian Council. He arranged for Hagel’s speech on March 2, 2007, the faculty source told The Daily Caller.

Iran’s Guardian Council cleared Amirahmadi to run for the presidency in 2013. Approval of the regime is required before candidates’ names can appear on the ballot. To be approved, candidates must be Shia, male, and committed to the Islamic revolution.
...
A press release in 2007 noted that the “Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies” — Amirahmadi’s campus group – ”is hosting the senator’s visit to the university.”

Amirahmadi’s CV discloses that he has received financial support from the Alavi Foundation, a wealthy organization that the U.S. government has called “a front for the government of Iran.”

And IRS records provided to TheDC by FoundationSearch.com show that between 2003 and 2008, Rutgers University received $688,000 from the same foundation.

The New York Post reported in 2009 that the Alavi Foundation contributed $100,000 towards Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University.

“We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation,” Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, told the Post in 2009.

Read the whole thing. Hagel is like a gift that keeps on giving with one thing after another being uncovered. And yet... not one Democrat has said he (or she) would vote against him. What will it take to wake these people up as to who Hagel is? What is sufficient to be termed a smoking gun?

Schumer’s Silence

As a New Yorker I sure hope Schumer will at least bring our state some pork in return... It ain't kosher, but I'd at least like to know I got dinner before I was f***ed in the ass

(NYSUN) It’s too soon to say whether Senator Hagel will ultimately be confirmed when the Senate gets back from its vacation. It’s not too soon to suggest that the big loser in this affair looks increasingly likely to be Senator Schumer. He has long cast himself as a guardian on the Jewish front in our vast array of national interests. This was pointed out in a column by John Podhoretz that was issued Friday in the New York Post. It casts in sharp relief the fact that the senator crumpled in the case of Mr. Hagel.
Crumpling is a pattern with Mr. Schumer. We remember watching him in the mid-1990s, when he was in the House and the issue of Jerusalem came to a head. There came a moment when the Congress was going to mark the point by insisting that the American embassy in Israel, situated at Tel Aviv, be moved to Israel’s capital city. It was a favorite issue of Senator Moynihan, who once visited the offices of the Jewish Forward newspaper voicing indignation over a State Department telephone directory that had a listing for Jerusalem as not being in Israel.
The Democrats were being put on the spot by the Republicans, who had swept to power in both houses of Congress and were, at the prodding of Senator Dole, agitating to make an issue of Jerusalem. Mr. Schumer was among those boasting that the Democrats and the Clinton administration were finally going to fix the situation. At the 11th hour, however, the Democrats watered down the Jerusalem Embassy Act, proposing an escape hatch in the form of a waiver by which the president could evade the requirement to move the embassy.
It was, as we recall it, Dianne Feinstein who first advanced this dodge, which was promptly used by President Clinton. Senator Schumer stood silent. It wasn’t a party problem. President George W. Bush and President Obama also used the waiver, and Mr. Schumer stood silent then, too. The result is that although the act of 1995 set a goal of moving the embassy by 1999, we are coming up on a generation since the law was passed and the embassy hasn’t been moved. What reason is there to think that Mr. Schumer might have gone to the mat this time?
Mr. Schumer started cheering on the Republican opposition when Mr. Hagel was first advanced as a potential defense nominee. The minute we heard of Mr. Schumer’s bravado, we made a bet that he would reverse himself. It’s not a bet on which we got rich, and we’d have rather lost it. The fact, in any event, is that Mr. Schumer has been put to shame on his own boast by such stronger senators as Lindsey Graham and James Inhofe. New York’s senior senator could regain his reputation in a fell swoop were he to stand up on what he knows in his heart to be a tragic error by Mr. Obama. It’s unlikely, though we’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Smelling Chuck Hagel

Smelling Chuck Hagel « FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Image courtesy DavidDuke.com
My grandparents emigrated from Russia to the US before the revolution. They were the type that divided things, and people, into Good For The Jews or Bad For The Jews. They were wary people, who understood that a Jew always had to be careful, even in America. They could smell antisemitism, and they believed that a Jew could not count on the authorities, or on his non-Jewish neighbors if the worse happened. I was close to them, closer than to my Americanized parents, and I became this kind of Jew as well.

Most younger American Jews do not display this heightened awareness, this almost paranoid (but not unreasonable) consciousness of their Jewish marginality, as Jeremy Ben Ami of J Street explained to a NY Times reporter several years ago:

The average age of the dozen or so staff members is about 30. [J Street director Jeremy] Ben-Ami speaks for, and to, this post-Holocaust generation. “They’re all intermarried,” he says. “They’re all doing Buddhist seders.” They are, he adds, baffled by the notion of “Israel as the place you can always count on when they come to get you.”

That notion is not baffling to me and certainly wouldn’t have been to my grandparents.

My alarm bells went off when the President chose Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. I am not especially worried by officials of our government, even presidents, who are not particularly friendly to Israel. As Hagel himself said, they are American senators, or congressmen, or cabinet members, not Israelis. The trouble is that this guy — like another Obama nominee for an important post, Chas Freeman — is way over on the hostile side.

Hagel’s problem with Israel is so consistent over time and over issues, that it’s hard to believe it is wholly rational. The most recent example is his 2007 statement (which he says he “can’t recall making”) that “the State Department was becoming an adjunct of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.”

The assertion that the State Department — that bureau which fought tooth and nail to prevent Harry Truman from recognizing the Jewish state, which does not believe that any part of Jerusalem belongs to Israel, and which maintains a US Embassy to ‘Palestine’ in the capital of Israel (which it doesn’t recognize) — is dominated by Israel, is beyond ludicrous. So why did he make it?

This statement is ‘ZOG’ (Zionist Occupation Government) stuff, an expression of one of the central anti-Jewish myths, that of a shadowy Jewish conspiracy pulling the strings that control our government. It fits with Hagel’s use of the phrase ‘Jewish lobby’, and his suggestion that the lobby “intimidates” US officials.

Hagel’s supporters are pushing this theme to the max. Stephen Walt wrote,

…if the lobby takes Hagel down, it will provide even more evidence of its power, and the extent to which supine support for Israel has become a litmus test for high office in America. [my emphasis]

Ah, the powerful lobby! Ask M J Rosenberg:

The onslaught is unprecedented. Never before has virtually the entire organized Jewish community combined to stop a presidential cabinet appointment because it deems the potential nominee insufficiently devoted to Israel. …

The onslaught against Hagel is unique however because the reason for it is not merely that he opposes the rush to war with Iran and favors negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The reason is because he dared to refer to the existence of the Israel lobby. He said this in 2008 in an interview with former State Department official, Aaron Miller.

…

“The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here,” but as he put it, “I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator.”

That quote will likely doom Hagel’s candidacy because, if there is one institution that is considered untouchable, it is the Israel lobby and its power. [my emphasis]

Their theme is that “The Lobby” will “punish” Hagel and Obama for their disrespect. The same point is made by Patrick Slattery on (yes) DavidDuke.com:

AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which represent the official command center of organized American Jewry, have come out beating their chests over his public acknowledgement of the existence of the 800-pound gorilla of a “Jewish lobby.” On the other hand, “liberal” Zionists like Thomas Freidman and Peter Beirnart are defending Hagel, perhaps because nothing can draw public attention to the power of an 800-pound gorilla more than the gorilla ripping to pieces a respected public figure in broad daylight. [my emphasis]

All this diverts attention from other important questions about Hagel, like “is he competent to run the massive enterprise that is the Defense Department?” and, given his opposition to both economic sanctions and the use of force, “what does putting Hagel is in the chain of command of the US armed forces tell Iran about our resolve to stop them from getting nuclear weapons?” That may be the idea.

But that’s the business of our Senate, most of which unfortunately follows the President like a lapdog. As for me, I’m just a Zhid from a village in the Ukraine who knows when something, or someone, stinks.

Bill #Maher Takes On #GOP Opposition To #Hagel Over Israel: ‘The #Israelis Are Controlling Our Government’

Bill Maher tonight took on the GOP opposition to Chuck Hagel becoming the next defense secretary with the particular sticking point that he has made some controversial remarks about Israeli influence on the U.S. government. Maher argued the fact that this is causing such outrage only proves that the Israeli government does have undue influence on the United States.
RELATED: SNL’s Cut Cold Open Savages Republicans For Their Excessive Praise Of Israel At Chuck Hagel Hearings
Maher was, firstly, stunned that the Republicans are working this hard to fight the nomination of a member of thir own party. The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein explained that they are still trying to vet Hagel before the final vote. Maher couldn’t understand what they find “suspicious about him,” asking “he’s a right-wing Republican and that’s not good enough?”
Weinstein told Maher that there are more comments by Hagel being unearthed, one of which features a remark by Hagel that the State Department is run by the Israeli government. Maher stated that this is a matter of fact.

“Based on every statement I’ve heard from every Republican in the last two years, the Israelis are controlling our government.”

Watch the video below, courtesy of HBO:

—–
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

via mediaite.com

...but it doesn't seem like Israelis are controlling the media. Right Bill Maher? What is pulling the talking head strings... hmmm... probably the same people that financed Matt Damon's films

A #Hagel and #AlJazeera

It has now been revealed that the government of Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera, was a major contributor to the Atlantic Council when Hagel was its chairman.

(More on Hagel’s Al Jazeera and Arab Connections)

The Atlantic Council describes itself as a “preeminent, non partisan institution devoted to promoting transatlantic cooperation and international security.” Hagel is chairman of the group. Documents released by the Atlantic Council, in response to the controversy over Hagel’s nomination, show funding from several foreign governments, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia. A search also reveals that Atlantic Council officials have been appearing regularly on Al Jazeera, giving the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood credibility as a “news organization.”
According to the council’s own website, these appearances include:

• Barbara Slavin, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, was interviewed on Al Jazeera about the U.S. cyber-attacks against Iran.
• Michele Dunne, director of the Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, appeared on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story Americas to discuss Syria.
• J. Peter Pham, director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, discussed the situation in Mali on Al Jazeera English.
• Barry Pavel, director of the Council’s Program on International Security, appeared on Al Jazeera English’s show Inside Story Americas to discuss the deployment of 200 U.S. Marines to Australia.

In addition to Al Jazeera, Atlantic Council senior fellow Barbara Slavin appeared on the far-left MSNBC cable channel to sing the praises of Hagel as “non-ideological.”
But anti-communist blogger Trevor Loudon points out that Chuck Hagel serves on the board of the Ploughshares Fund, another of the George Soros-funded organizations, and that it is a “partner organization” of the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies.
In addition to his role as chairman of the Atlantic Council and a board member of the Ploughshares Fund, Hagel serves as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, which maintains campuses in Washington, D.C. and Qatar. Funding for the campus in Qatar comes from the Qatar Foundation, established by the ruling family.
Not surprisingly, Al Jazeera has featured interviews with faculty members from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, about the acquisition of Current TV and the violence in Syria. (MORE via canadafreepress.com)

Chuck Hagel questioned by Ted Cruz in confirmation hearing

America is a Bully?

#Hagel got Eisenhower very, very wrong

In an earlier post, I noted Chuck Hagel's admiration for the 34th President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, specifically for Eisenhower's handling of what's known in Israel as the Sinai campaign (the 1956 war between Israel, Britain and France on one side and Egypt on the other). I also reported that Hagel had it all wrong, because Eisenhower later believed that making Israel withdraw from Sinai was the biggest mistake of his Presidency.
Lee Smith has a lot more details about Eisenhower's regrets over the Sinai campaign.

In fact, Eisenhower came to believe that Suez had been the “biggest foreign-policy blunder of his administration.” In hindsight, it’s not hard to see why. He ruined the position of two longtime allies, effectively driving Britain out of the Middle East once and for all, and without any benefit to American interests. If Eisenhower expected Nasser to be grateful, he was sorely mistaken.

“From Nasser’s perspective, he played the superpowers against each other and came out the winner,” says Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “What Ike thought he was doing was laying the groundwork for a new order in the Middle East, a third course between the re-imposition of European colonialism and the Soviet Union. But all Eisenhower did was strengthen Nasser and destabilize the region.”

Doran, a former George W. Bush Administration National Security Council staffer in charge of the Middle East, is finishing a book about Eisenhower and the Middle East that looks at how Eisenhower’s understanding of the region changed over time. “Eisenhower slammed his allies and aided his enemies at Suez,” Doran explains, “because his policy was based on certain key assumptions of how the Arab world worked. The most important of these was the notion of Arab unity. He believed they would respond as a bloc to certain stimuli.”

Chief among them, Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed, was the Arab-Israeli conflict. They saw the role of the United States then as playing the honest broker, mediating between Israel on one side and the Arab world on the other. If this conceit is still popular today with American policymakers, says Doran, “it’s partly because some Arab officials continue to talk this way. The idea is, to win over the Arabs we have to stop being so sympathetic to Israel.”

But in the wake of Suez, Eisenhower came to see the region through a different lens. He paid more attention to what Arab leaders actually did, rather than what they said. “Between March 1957 and July 1958, Eisenhower got the equivalent of the Arab spring,” says Doran. “It was a revolutionary wave around the region and for Ike a tutorial on Arab politics. There was upheaval after upheaval, in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and then the Iraqi revolution of 1958 that toppled an American ally. All of them were internal conflicts, tantamount to Arab civil wars, and had nothing to do with Israel. With this, Eisenhower recognized that the image he had of the Arab world had nothing to do with the political realities of the Middle East.”

Read the whole thing.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Obama has the same mistaken conception of the Middle East that Eisenhower had in 1956. Today's it's known as linkage. By 1958, Eisenhower had dismissed it as a policy strategy. Don't bet on Obama doing the same.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

@YidWithLid: The Chuck #Hagel Video @JStreetDotOrg Tried To Keep From The Senate

In 2009 Chuck Hagel was a keynote speaker to the J-Street Conference (J-Street is the fake pro-Israel group created by George Soros to give cover to anti-Israel activists).
According to Jennifer Rubin, the Senate Armed-Services Committee which will evaluate Hagel's nomination was tipped off that Hagel departed from his prepared remarks and made controversial comments to the J Street Conference.

In exchanges with Senate Armed Services Committee staff, J Street volunteered the prepared remarks and said it decided not to provide the complete video for fear that Hagel’s remarks would be taken out of context.

Succumbing to the pressure, J-Street finally posted the video this afternoon.
In viewing the video (30 Minutes long-embedded below) we learn that Hagel is a believer in the meme created by former Secretary of State James "F**K The Jews They Won't Vote For Us Anyway" Baker as part of his Iraq study group.
This falsehood is that all of the United States' problems in the Middle East are caused by the Israel/Palestinian conflict--be it Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan--all of it would be easily solved if there could only be peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.  It has nothing to do with radical Islam?
When originally suggested by Baker's study group then Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden  stated that he rejects the linkage the study group made “Even if a peace treaty were signed tomorrow, it would not end the civil war in Iraq,” Biden said during a January 17 2007 hearing. But it is a falsehood Hagel perpetuates in his speech.
While specifying that Israel-Palestinian negotiations were key for US policy success in the region, Hagel ignores the fact that Iran may be the single most destabilizing influence in the Middle East. Hagel does say that Iran should be prevented from getting the bomb, but rejects both sanctions and the military option leaving engagement as the only option.
Another naivete' of Hagel's highlighted by the speech was the Senator's belief that the Syrian government was just sitting there waiting to be flipped from the "dark side" to peace makers. He  believed that through "engagement" Assad would reject Iran. I wonder how that worked out?
In this video, Hagel shows himself to have a naive' world view especially when applied to the Middle East and does not belong in such a key position defending the United States.
If you cannot see video below, Please Click Here


Note: I have downloaded the video and will repost myself should J-Street decide to take it down.

via yidwithlid.blogspot.com

If Iran kills two million Jews in an afternoon they will find a way to blame George W. Bush

On orders from Moscow, American Jewish Communists suspended criticism of Hitler during the August 1939-June 1941 period of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. Violation of that edict was called “premature antifascism” and men died for it. The left-wing group-think party line far outranks Zionism for many, many Jews. You are going to see this in the immediate future, as Mr. Obama lines up his many Jewish friends and supporters to back Mr. Hagel.

Hagel denies Armenian genocide

Armenian-American leaders and human rights advocates have expressed deep reservations about the nomination of Chuck Hagel to lead the defense department.
Hagel, a two-term Republican senator from Nebraska, was nominated Monday as President Barack Obama’s pick to head the Pentagon. He faces criticism for opposing a 2005 congressional resolution recognizing Turkey’s genocide of more than one million Armenians.
“What happened in 1915 happened in 1915,” Hagel said during a 2005 trip to Armenia when he was serving in the Senate. “As one United States senator, I think the better way to deal with this is to leave it open to historians and others to decide what happened and why.”
“The fact is that this region needs to move forward,” Hagel continued. “We need to find a lasting, just peace between Turkey and Armenia and the other nations of this region. I am not sure that by going back and dealing with that in some way that causes one side or the other to be put in difficult spot, helps move the peace process forward.”
Armenian-American leaders and genocide experts decried these comments as insensitive and dangerous. They maintain that Hagel’s willingness to overlook the systematic genocide of more than one million people raises concerns about his possible tenure as the nation’s top defense official.
“Senator Hagel’s remarks from 2005 ignore a proud chapter in U.S. history during which America’s diplomatic community played an important role denouncing human rights violations and setting an example of humanitarian assistance on behalf of a people at risk,” said Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the nonpartisan Armenian Assembly of America. (more)

you can't say Hagel has not been consistent in his loyalties. It would be interesting now that Turkey has a proxy war with Iran in Syria where his bias would leave him. I really don't want to find this out however.

Colin Powell: It’s ‘disgraceful’ to play anti-Semitic card against Hagel | Capital J

(JTA) During his "Meet The Press" appearance over the weekend, Colin Powell ordered Chuck Hagel to write 100 times on a blackboard that there is no Jewish lobby, just an Israel lobby.
But Powell also gave Hagel's critics the paddle for playing the anti-Semitism card:

They [hawks] can make all the criticisms they want. When they go over the edge and say because Chuck said Jewish lobby, he is anti-Semitic, that’s disgraceful. We shouldn’t have that kind of language in our dialogue but they’re fully entitled to their views and I didn’t ever think they would go away and not be heard from again.

Didn't Hagel say Jewish Lobby? Did he apologize for it or dig in his heels? Powell is a supporter of Israel in name only... Just like he is a Republican in name only.

Hagel's No-Nukes "Global Zero"

Peter Huessy

Generally it means that even the severely reduced number of warheads deployed in our arsenal would not -- if they were needed in a crisis -- be available for use. If that in fact took place -- with countries hostile to the US having arsenals in excess of the US force -- it would probably be in irresistible invitation to them to attack.

Former Senator Chuck Hagel, nominated to be Secretary of Defense, is also a signatory of what is known as the "Global Zero" plan. It calls for the United States and Russia to begin comprehensive nuclear arms negotiations in early 2013 to achieve zero nuclear weapons worldwide by 2030 in four phases.
 
The Global Zero plan first would remove all US tactical nuclear weapons from US combat bases in Europe to storage facilities in the United States. However, while these tactical US weapons would no longer be able to defend Europe and NATO, Russians weapons would be able to attack all of Europe in a relatively short time -- launching weapons from bases in Russia, where they would be stored, reconstituted and redeployed. Given the nature of such weapons systems, the verification of such efforts would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
The real eye-opener is that the 1,000 ceiling for the US would include our tactical nuclear weapons and stored weapons for reserve emergencies, and the currently deployed 1,550 weapons. The implication is that Hagel is pushing an 80% cut in overall US deployed weapons. If done proportionately, that would involve a reduction to fewer than roughly 300 total deployed strategic nuclear warheads, a level less than China, and less than India and Pakistan combined.

This further signals the elimination of the US strategic nuclear Triad (air, sea and land) -- 300 accountable warheads would enable the deployment of a limited bomber or submarine or IBM leg of our nuclear deterrent, but certainly not all three legs. This would have the effect, by virtually eliminating all serious deterrent capability to our adversaries, of massively increasing the instability of the international security environment -- a dramatic reversal of the promises made within the New START Treaty ratification process, in which enhancing and maintaining strategic stability was one of the cornerstones of the US Nuclear Posture Review.
By quickly withdrawing our tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, we would be emasculating the extended deterrent umbrella which now covers Europe, and as a result seriously weaken the defense ties to our allies and friends across the Atlantic. There would also be a corresponding weakening of our deterrent umbrella over the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, just at a time when these three nations, and others, are threatened by an expanding North Korean missile and nuclear weapons capability and a major modernization program by China of its nuclear weapons. The result, based on reasonable mid-point estimates of the current PRC arsenal, would be a Chinese deployed nuclear arsenal in excess of that deployed by the United States, to say nothing of what Peking could deploy in the near and intermediate future.
The Global Zero plan also calls for "de-alerting" our nuclear weapons. That would mean any number of things, but generally it means even the severely reduced number of warheads in our deployed arsenal would not, in a crisis, be available for use if they were needed. The warheads might be removed from their missiles or bombers; they might be disabled and stored remotely -- requiring many hours, days, or longer to be redeployed.
Previous administrations, as well as the current government, have in various ways discussed and considered such a move. In every instance, de-alerting has been firmly rejected. First, the proposal is totally unverifiable. Second, it is highly destabilizing: in a crisis, there would be a race to re-alert and rearm, making the first and sudden use of nuclear weapons a greater or more likely possibility. Third, de-alerting solves no "nuclear" problem, whether in concerns abut proliferation, threats of an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] attack, or any other deterrent or arms control requirement.
The second phase of the Global Zero plan would occur from 2014-2018. In a multilateral framework, the US and Russia would agree to reduce to 500 total warheads each, to be implemented by 2021. All other countries, including China, Pakistan, North Korea and others, would freeze their nuclear stockpiles until 2018, followed by proportionate reductions until 2021 -- irrespective of whether the US deployed arsenal was smaller and less effective than many other countries. If in fact that took place — with nations hostile to the US having arsenals in excess of the US force -- it would be the first time in the history of the nuclear age that such an event took place, and probably an irresistible invitation to them to attack.
Moreover, this plan assumes that a comprehensive verification and enforcement system will have been established -- including agreed-on no-notice, on-site inspections, and that safeguards on the civilian nuclear fuel cycle would be strengthened to prevent their being diverted to build weapons.
The final two phases would include a "binding" 'Global Zero Accord' between 2019-2023, signed by all nuclear capable countries, for the phased, verified, proportionate reduction of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads by 2030. The whopping loophole in this plan is that any nation deeming itself not nuclear-capable could opt out of such an agreement, then be completely free to surprise the world with a nuclear arsenal once all the major powers had eliminated theirs.
Between 2024-2030, finally, there would be a complete "phased, verified, proportionate dismantlement of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads by 2030," with an accompanying comprehensive verification and enforcement system prohibiting the development and possession of nuclear weapons.
Apart from the "Alice in Wonderland" nature of this proposal, there is the sense that its advocates share a less than serious understanding of both the nature of US deterrence needs, and the geopolitical balance between the United States and Russia, not amenable to international or treaty law.

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The Hagel Pick Telegraphs Weakness

(Gassed by John Singer Sargent, 1918-1919. Photograph: Alamy
In 1918, the British Ministry of Information commissioned the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) to contribute a large-scale work to a planned Hall of Remembrance commemorating Anglo-American cooperation. Travelling to the front in July 1918, Sargent witnessed the harrowing aftermath of mustard gas attacks, which became the subject of this new work, Gassed - a six-metre-long tableau depicting a procession of wounded men stumbling, blindfolded, towards a dressing station.
While this painting, completed in 1919, is not representative of the illustrious portraitist's oeuvre, it has become widely recognised as an embodiment of the pain of war in a strangely serene and dignified manner. Virginia Woolf, in her essay The Fleeting Portrait, wrote of Gassed that it "at last pricked some nerve of protest, or perhaps of humanity". It now hangs in the Imperial War Museum in London.)

Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison

President Obama's choice of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense is a dangerous choice that telegraphs weakness toward Iran. In the Senate, Mr. Hagel compiled a worrisome record toward the world's leading sponsor of terrorism.

It is Iran that backs Hezb'allah in Lebanon. We haven't heard much about the Cedar Revolution in that war-torn country. That's because Hezb'allah murdered the democratic leaders for reform.

Iran is behind Hamas in Gaza. Hamas defeated the corrupt regime of Mahmoud Abbas in elections in Gaza that soon degenerated into civil war. Abbas has papered over those differences and now seeks to present a united front to the ruling Muslim Brotherhood-backed party in Egypt and to the U.N.


But all efforts to de-legitimize, surround, and eliminate Israel -- what they call "the Zionist entity" -- are fueled and financed by the mullahs in Tehran.

What has been Sen. Hagel's response to all this? He has ruled out the use of force against Iran, even as he opposes economic sanctions. We have argued that economic sanctions against Iran will not work. But others whom we respect believe they will. It's a legitimate debate. What should not be up for debate is the need to do something to stop the mullahs from getting a nuclear weapon.

What has Chuck Hagel suggested? He wants us to open an interest section in Tehran. That would be a first step to sending an ambassador there. Question: where is the U.S. ambassador the Obama administration sent to Syria with such fanfare several years ago?

We all know, tragically, what became of the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Former Sen. Hagel seems to have forgotten that we once had an ambassador in Tehran. And while that ambassador was away from his station, the entire U.S. Embassy was overrun by radical "students" doing the bidding of the same mullahs Hagel would appease. Our diplomats and U.S. Marines were held hostage for 444 days, an act of war against this country. The mullahs ruling today are the same clique that ruled Iran then.

It would be tempting to say this is the worst move in U.S. diplomatic history. But in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson agreed with his personal adviser, "Colonel" Edward M. House, that it would be OK to let the Germans use our U.S. State Department cables to transmit peace proposals to their embassy in Washington, D.C.

The Germans, then at war with Britain, complained that their enemies had cut their Atlantic cable and were intercepting their radio messages. So President Wilson accommodated them. He let the Germans send encrypted messages via our own State Department cable!

German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann in 1917 transmitted the now-infamous "Zimmermann Telegram" through this channel which Wilson had unconscionably provided for him. The encrypted German message was relayed to their embassy in Mexico City.

In that Zimmermann Telegram was an offer to Mexico to join Germany in a war against the United States. To further tempt Mexico, Zimmermann offered German backing for a reconquista of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. (California was reserved for the deal Zimmermann planned to offer Japan to enter the war against us.)

When this Zimmermann Telegram was uncovered, the German foreign minister expected no trouble with the U.S. administration. "President Wilson will do nothing. He only wants peace," said Zimmermann. It was one of history's classic miscalculations.

America was plunged into the First World War. And Wilson's weakness had tempted the Germans to think they could get away with all this. We were unprepared for that war because Wilson 's Cabinet members -- State, War, and Navy -- were pacifists. They bragged that being unprepared was a sign of our peaceful purposes.

Chuck Hagel is backed by today's Unpreparedness Lobby. For all those who think we can have peace by disarming America and sitting down for talks with known terrorists, Hagel is their man.

This poignant painting by the great American artist, John Singer Sargent, shows just a portion of the price we paid for Wilson's weakness. Must we re-learn these bitter lessons in every generation? Must we telegraph weakness with the nomination of Chuck Hagel?

Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison are senior fellows at the Family Research Council. They are veteran writers on social, economic, and national security matters.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/01/the_hagel_pick_telegraphs_... at January 09, 2013 - 08:56:04 AM CST

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The Chuck Hagel Bankster Connections

The Chuck Hagel Bankster Connections.HT: EconomicPolicyJournal.(many faces in many places)The nomination of Chuck Hagel has prompted an email response from Alan P. at PEU Report. He writes to EPJ:

Pentagon nominee Chuck Hagel has his own PEU ties. I've yet to see the media report them.

Alan, also, provided a link to his post, Chuck Hagel PEU, which details how Hagel has been keeping himself busy with his bankster ties.
In his post, Alan notes that Hagel sits on the advisory board of Corsair Capital. a private equity underwriter (PEU) focused on the financial services industry. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation and Zurich’s Holding Company of America; and the Advisory Board of Deutsche Bank America, and is a Senior Advisor to Gallup.
Most noteworthy, Hagel is a director of Wolfensohn and Company. The company is founded by global operator James Wolfensohn. After Paul Volcker left the Federal Reserve to cash in, he chose to go with Wolfensohn's predecessor firm as a senior partner. Wolfensohn sold the predecessor firm when he became president of the World Bank.
In 2005, upon leaving as president of the World Bank, he founded Wolfensohn and Company, LLC, where Hagel is a director. The firm is privately held firm that invests, and provides strategic consulting advice to governments and large corporations doing business, in emerging market economies.
Since 2006, Wolfensohn has also been the chairman of the International Advisory Board of Citigroup.
In 2009, he became a member of the International Advisory Council of the Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation.
Bottom line, Hagel is operating at the core of crony corporate America and the expanding empire, if he is that close to Wolfensohn.
Neoconservatives and and gay rights groups are up in arms about some of Hagel's comments in the past about Israel and gays, but Hagel is a major insider. The empire will continue to expand under him, if he becomes Defense Secretary. For the real insiders, the Israel controversy and the gay comments are surface skirmishes, what the Hagel nomination is really about is a major league bankster heading the DOD, and in the end that means its about huge crony $$$$.Read the full story here.

That Chevron board essentially means oil money that is loyal to Saudi interests. Actually that is surprising since Hagel appears to be lenient with Shia interests like Iran and Hezbollah and their allies in Asia like Russia and China.