There was some real comedy gold in the Senate conformation hearings on Obama's choice for Secretary of Defense today, Chuck Hagel.And some other things that were decidedly not funny.
Okay..we know Hagel was appointed because like the president, CIA appointee John Brenner and newly confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry, he thinks the solution to America's problems with Islamist fascism lies in retreat from the region while appeasing and empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and its various affiliates at home and abroad and creating what the president called 'daylight' between America and Israel. We know that like them, Hagel is soft on Iran, thinks Hamas and Hezbollah shouldn't be labeled terrorists and is a big fan of trying to force Israel back to indefensible borders.
And mostly, we know that Hagel is President Obama's 'Republican' fig leaf for the the huge cuts the president wants to make in our military.
But until today, there were three things we didn't know for sure.
The first one is that Hagel, aside from his dark fantasies about the Evil Jewish Lobby, aside from being clueless on most foreign policy questions, is someone who makes Joe Biden look well informed and articulate.To mangle an apt quotation from Vergil, Hoc opus, hic labor est..to descend to that level is no big thing, but coming back is a tough row to hoe.
Even Lefties who were touting Obama's pick as the sharpest tool in the foreign policy shed since Otto von Bismarck or William Gladstone were shocked at Hagel's disastrous outing today.
The highlights? Well let's start with Hagel's stammering non-reply when Senator Lindsay Graham asked Hagel to back up his famous statement about the 'Jewish Lobby' and to name one Senator who'd been pressured into doing anything stupid by that 'Lobby'. And the repeat performance when Hagel was asked to name anything he considered stupid that the Senate had done because of 'Jewish pressure'.
I know, the Lefties were screaming at their television sets '"Say Iraq! Say Iraq, dammit!" Ah, the myths die hard, although it would have been amusing to watch Hagel get taken apart by other senate questioners if he had.
Then there was his stumbling and refusing to answer a direct question over whether Hagel agreed that the Iraq surge worked:
Then, there was Texas Senator Ted Cruz catching him in a lie over an interview Hagel did with Al Jazeera where he agreed with host Riz Kahn that America was 'the world's bully' and slapping him upside the head with it:
(by the way, here's the actual interview...so that the Left can't lie about the quote from Hagel being out of context)
There was also Hagel's inability to explain his constant shilling for his pals, the Iranian government. In the first clip, he gets asked by Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe why the Iranian government has cheered his appointment and endorsed him as our next Secretary of defense:
Actually, the Iranians are not the only anti-semites backing Chuck Hagel. Here's well known anti-semite, anti-Israel shill and former member of George Soro's Media Matters M.J. Rosenberg, who tweeted: "I spent a couple of hours with Hagel a few years ago. Talked about Israel. Happily, he is lying today & knows it. He'll be a good SeDef".
Whoopsie.
In the next clips, he refers to Iran as a 'legitimate government' in an attempt to explain why he refused to vote to classify Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group, even after the last bogus election and even though the Guards have been indulging in terrorism against civilian targets for years..and then tries to walk it back a few minutes later in the third clip after an anxious consultation with someone:
The worst one is actually the second thing we found out today that we didn't know for sure. In spite of all his rhetoric to the contrary, President Obama has no intention of stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but is counting on containment working - and Hagel stupidly let the cat out of the bag, and then tried to walk it back:
The third thing? As CNN's Dana Bash pointed out, senators on both sides of the aisle were shocked at how ill prepared and dim witted Hagel appeared in the hearings, especially since he used to be on the other side of proceedings like this and knows how they work.
As you might imagine, for even mid-level cabinet positions, appointees are normally groomed carefully, given answers and told what to say to questions that are likely to come up, and for an appointment like Secretary of Defense, they go through rehearsals.
Hagel was not put through this regimen, or if he was, he wasn't well prepared at all. And that tells us something important.
It tells us that President Obama has total contempt for the office of Secretary of Defense if he feels this buffoon is the best our warriors deserve. Hagel was appointed not to actually contribute anything, but to do what he's told and be a reliable stooge in presiding over the hollowing out of our military and creating that closeness to Islamist regimes and that 'daylight' between Israel and America this president wants.
It also tells us that President Obama has total contempt for the Senate and the conformation process itself. He likely knows he has enough votes to get Hagel confirmed on a straight party line simple majority vote, and not only could care less how the conformation hearings go, but actually looks forward to forcing through an obviously unqualified and inappropriate nominee as an egotistic power game.
While the senate Republicans could filibuster, it's not going to be easy, and you would only need five Republicans - or four Republicans and one Independent - to vote for cloture to stop it.
There's also the remote possibility that President Obama is using Hagel as a political decoy to get Kerry and Brennan confirmed quickly, let Hagel take the flak and then nominate someone else just as bad for SecDef, but withut6 Hagel's public record to latch on to. It's not the first time something like that's been done in Washington, but if that's what's going down, it changes nothing about the nature of the contempt President Obama seems to be evidencing for our military, the office of Secretary of Defense, the Senate, and the American people he's supposed to be serving....not good.
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