The website Common Dreams notes that during his interrogation before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Obama's candidate for Secretary of War, Chuck Hagel and his inquisitors mentioned Israel 166 times. Israel's main rival in the region, Iran, got 144 mentions.
The epidemic of suicide currently sweeping through the US armed forces was mentioned twice.
It seems the Senators, both Republicrat and Demolican, have little or no interest in Hagel's potential for heading up a very large federal department, and none of their questions seemed aimed at determining whether he is capable of discharging the duties of such a post with honor and competence.
Instead he was merely examined so that the Senate committee could assess the orthodoxy of his beliefs, for he has shown signs of renegade-ism in the past. No word yet on whether the body found him sufficiently pro-Israel and delusional about the "Iranian nuclear threat" to get the job, or whether he has committed blasphemy, causing his very name to become anathema, causing him to be cast into outer darkness.
Stephen Walt, the Harvard international relations professor who co-authored the “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, issued a special thanks to the Senate Armed Services Committee...on his foreignpolicy.com blog Friday, suggesting that controversial 2007 book should sell like hotcakes after what he called “the Hagel circus”.
“I want to thank the Emergency Committee for Israel, Sheldon Adelson, and the Senate Armed Services Committee for providing such a compelling vindication of our views,” wrote Walt, who, among other things, has been accused of anti-Semitism for writing a book that criticised the allegedly excessive influence the Israel lobby wields over U.S. foreign policy and the public debate that surrounds it.
I pack, you pack, we all pack for AIPAC.
1 comment:
Dave, you've touched upon some touchy things that touch the lives of people who've lost much of their sense of touch for important things.
Post a Comment