Interesting thoughts on Hagel...

[LeftNYC]

Hagel seems to be putting his neck on the line but is he just being the first GOPer to listen to the poll numbers...Interesting thoughts from Tapped...

ALL BARK, NO BITE. In the last week alone, Senator Chuck Hagel has compared Iraq to Vietnam, repeated his line that “the White House is completely disconnected from reality,” and said that the US is loosing in Iraq. Just yesterday he told George Stephanopoulos that "We should start figuring out how we get out of there.”
That kind of honesty might seem refreshing at first glance. But lost in the hype over a Republican maverick on an off-message binge is the small detail that Hagel, in his capacity as a United States Senator, supports no policy for actually withdrawing troops from Iraq. For in the world according to Hagel, ‘start figuring out how we get out of there,’ does not actually involve starting to think about how we get out of there. Hagel, for example, has consistently refused to breach what Sen. Russ Feingold yesterday called “the taboo on talking about a timeline.” So before war skeptics consider Hagel one of their own for saying things like "The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have" or “we need to be out of there,” it's important to remember that he refuses to offer any tangible support for making that latter outcome more likely.

Not unlike the time that Hagel voiced eloquent concern for the damage that John Bolton could do to American interests as UN Ambassador, then voted for him anyway, Hagel's current jockeying is nothing but empty rhetoric.

--Mark Leon Goldberg

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/

[Jacobin]

1. I think he's just a realist

Having been a participant in one inane, clusterfuck of a failed war, he can see this one for what it is and just wants to do the right thing. He knows what happens to soldiers in a war.

[LeftNYC]

2. His opinion is appreciated, but action

speaks louder than words.

[tridim]

4. A realist who is heavily invested and responsible for BBV

Fuck him.

[Inland]

3. Hagel's half way there. He admits the current Bushian

course, stayed or not, is a recipe for disaster.

Once you start considering the alternatives--either increase troops, get foreigners involved, or bug out and hope for the best--you end up with bug out.

But there's a lot of convincing left to do, even after one cuts loose the Bush anchor of "no new ideas, no new tactics, no admission of any error" from the ship of state.