via Lobe Log
The smear campaign against Chuck Hagel did not begin on Dec. 14, 2012. The former Nebraska senator’s opposition to war as the preferred means of conducting foreign policy made him a maverick during the post-9/11 Bush years. Although most Republicans agreed with Hagel’s socially conservative positions on domestic issues, his nuanced [...]
via Lobe Log
President Barack Obama will nominate former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary to replace Leon Panetta, according to Democratic officials.
Politico predicts that “is likely to ignite a raucous confirmation battle.”
The AP meanwhile reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be taking a wait and see [...]
via Lobe Log
It’s June 15, 1992. A news nugget on page A-12 of the Washington Post reports that the chief of Israel’s Air Force believes military action might be necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons:
Maj. Gen. Herzl Budinger told Israeli television that if Iran’s intensive effort to develop [...]
via Lobe Log
While Chuck Hagel is twisting in the wind, being savaged by the Emergency Committee for Israel and other “pro-Israel” organizations, Israels’ Prime Minister is contemplating making a neoconservative American-born GOP operative Israel’s next ambassador to the United States.
Ariel Kahan, the diplomatic correspondent of the conservative and religiously orthodox [...]
via Lobe Log
AIPAC comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, and ‘then you’ll get 80 to 90 senators on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the letters.’
When someone would accuse him of not being pro-Israel because he didn’t sign the letter, Hagel told me he responds: “‘I didn’t sign the [...]
via Lobe Log
The revolving door between government and industry is nothing new. Government regulators get jobs in related industries when they retire; military officers accept positions with defense contractors. Former members of Congress have also accepted positions in business and industry, often as lobbyists, after tiring of office or being voted out.
But [...]
via Lobe Log
Ehud Barak is retiring from Israeli politics in 2013, after two decades. Or so he says.
A career officer in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) before entering politics, Barak’s first mention in the US press appears to have been on May 22, 1993, when the New York Times‘ Clyde [...]
via Lobe Log
The Gaza Strip, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and the State of Israel, is 25 miles long. At its narrowest point it is less than 4 miles wide, and at its maximum width, it’s 7.5 miles wide — a total area of 141 square miles. With a population of 1.7 million [...]
via Lobe Log
Meir Dagan, the former director of Israel’s Mossad, has received a liver transplant in Belarus. Reports from the Israeli press that have now made their way into western media sources state that Belarus’ president, Alexander Lukashenko, announced at a press conference on Oct. 16 that the operation had taken place [...]
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Hagel and the Hawks
via Lobe Log
Chuck Hagel hasn’t even been nominated for Secretary of Defense and yet rumors abound that he is a frontrunner for the job. The volume of the squawking from hard-line hawks opposing his nomination reveals much about the way the neoconservative echo chamber operates.
Morris Amitay, a former executive director of [...]