How much cocaine do you have to be on to go naked hiking for five days on the Appalachian Trail? And how do you do it as governor of a state and manage to dodge your own security, your own staff, the state police, and the press? Sanford's reappearance creates a lot more questions than it resolves.

Ignorance is Piss

The tumult in Iran has lasted late into the night, and yet, here in America, the cable news networks are firmly in fire-and-forget weekend programming mode. Larry King was on during his regularly scheduled slot this evening, MSNBC is running it's standard "documentaries" on prison life, and CSPAN-3 was airing an interview with former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who has been dead for over ten years.

Meanwhile, here's the main page of CNN.com, which might as well be a representative sample of America's perspective on the world:




That's right. A (counter?-)revolution may well be brewing in Iran, and in CNN's best judgment, Americans should be more interested in the bankruptcy of a national chain of amusement parks.

Sometimes I marvel at the extent of our national self-absorption. Is any other country on Earth as staggeringly ignorant and dangerously influential as ours?

I can't find words to express how much I would love to be at a dinner with Charles Krauthammer and Barack Obama.

Civil Obedience

Conservatives suck at protests.

There will be no tea-dumping in the Potomac River -- that's illegal -- but organizers of today's national tea party tax protest found out this morning that so is their plan to dump a million tea bags in Lafayette Square to demonstrate displeasure at government spending and tax policies.

Protesters, using a rented truck to haul the million tea bags, began unloading their cargo at the park this morning but were told by officials that they didn't have proper permits and must move the tea . They complied with the order but are still considering what to do with the load.

As my understanding goes, it doesn't even count as a real protest if no one gets beaten up by a cop.

Tenuous Grasp of Reality

Found here:

"I don't know how to break this to you, but people that go out and murder people don't read The Wall Street Journal."

-- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on whether the bad economy increases gun violence.

I don't even know where to begin pointing out the problems with this statement. Does Bloomberg really think that people need a newspaper to tell them that they're broke, unemployed, desperate and pissed off?

Briefly

Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

Discrimination is not defensible under the umbrella of religious freedom, just as the assassination of William McKinley is not defensible under the umbrella of political "speech" or expression.

A jump to the left, but then a step to the right

I find that in recent weeks, I've spent more time looking for hope on the right wing than I have from the left. I am, of course, still a proud liberal, and I still get a tingle from saying "President Obama." But his presidency thus far has been less than perfect, and given that the dire circumstances of the present time leave little room for error, we need to be especially deliberate about thinking critically about all of our leaders and their decisions.

Like the President, I back Keynesian policies in the face of an economic crisis like the one we're in: we spent our way into this mess and now we have to bite the bullet and, very strategically, spend our way back out. "Shovel-ready projects" are a good first step, as well as steps to reinforce the social welfare safety net by extending unemployment benefits. I completely back Obama's holy trinity of energy, health care, and education: I think that the first two can provide a valuable short term economic stimulus and the latter will build a foundation for long term viability.

But as we're all so painfully aware, the biggest federal expenditures right now are going to the financial sector which (not single-handedly, mind you) emptied a clip of hollowpoints into the system that made them rich. We're propping up banks far beyond the basic assurances of the FDIC, often taking control of them, and assuming all of their losses while taking none of the gains. Meanwhile, as Eliot Spitzer has been trying to point out in his Slate articles (which are a must-read), we're also bailing out AIG so that they can make good on their insurance policies by paying huge amounts... to the very banks we already paid off. Meanwhile, all of this is being financed by the Chinese, who not only have a government inhospitable to the capitalist-democratic way of life, but who could stand some capital injections of their own.* All of this debt is increasing rapidly not only in principle, but every additional dollar we spend is accruing interest. Each year in our budgets we keep current on the interest, meanwhile constantly adding to the amount on which we're paying that interest.

Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany won't go on board for the kind of massive government spending that Obama wants from his counterparts throughout the developed world, and very shrewdly: "Over the next decade we will undergo a massive demographic change, and, therefore, borrowing is a greater burden for the future than in a country with a much more continuously growing population." It's a popular trope to say that we're leveraging our current excesses on the earnings of our children. But what should happen if, like Germany, our population levels off or starts declining... or even worse, if we don't turn around the growing class disparity and the vast majority of American children remain in an impoverished underclass with limited earning potential? What happens with that debt then? What happens to our budget projections? It's one thing to plan for what happens if everything turns out as planned, but what about contingencies? Natural disaster? A large-scale terrorist attack? An oil shortage based on our sabre-rattling with both Venezuela and Iran? We have to face the possibility that our economy will likely not be fixed by the end of the year, and even when it is fixed, it will be some time before it's as strong as it needs to be to pay off the obscene amounts of debt we're accruing.

The cartoonists are lampooning Obama daily for his deference to the needs of Wall Street while playing tough with Detroit (which, mind you, would be well served with three long-due bankruptcies and the creation of incentives for foreign automakers to expand into Detroit and employ UAW labor -- support good products and American labor until American companies make a product worth buying). The shouts of populist rage are audible from sea to shining sea, and many of us are hoping in vain for Obama to let the financial industry tank so we can rebuild it in a responsible model. Indeed, it's often hard to tell the left from the right, when the conservatives are accusing the liberals of socialism for wanting to disassemble astronomically reckless banks and restore broad-based financial autonomy and independent ownership so we can engage in true economic competition.

Unfortunately, as we all know, that won't happen. Building an economy where there wasn't one before is challenge enough (see Eastern Europe, 1991), but completely restructuring one of the largest and most convoluted financial systems in history is beyond the range of any President, even Barack Obama. Letting Wall Street and Detroit do a faceplant would wreak more havoc in the short-term than America would stand for, and Washington would be forced by that same populist rage to realign their goals and strategies before they had a chance to do any good with the opportunity they had created. No, for as frustrating as it can be to watch, dismantling the financial institutions we've all come to know and loathe is a project that should be saved for when we have another house to live in after we've burned this one down, not when we have an unemployment rate at 8.5% and rising fast.

With so many problems in having free-for-all battle to determine which gets to screw us the hardest, it seems obvious to me that it's necessary for public officials to remember once again that communication is a two-way street. I'm normally one to defend a certain amount of partisan bickering: I think people often vote along a party line because that's what they really believe, and that's why they joined that particular party. But a republic is built upon the principle of debate, and a real debate only exists when each party can acknowledge that they don't have all the answers, and that the other party has some validity to their argument.

And so, though I hate to find myself saying this, I'm keeping my eye on the right wing for glimmers of hope (however small) that a loyal conservative opposition may appear. And slowly but surely, they are starting to emerge.

• Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins. I don't expect them to defer to the Democrats on every issue, but at least they've demonstrated an ability to listen.
  
  
• John Feehery, a lobbyist and former staffer for GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert wrote a remarkably mild-mannered (though somewhat naive-sounding) column for CNN encouraging civil debate:
  

  Instead, Republicans should allow themselves to like the president, just as they fight against his policies. And as they fight his policies, they should do all that they can to market their own ideas so that the American people understand that the Republicans have positive alternatives that will make our country stronger, safer and more prosperous in the future.

• John McCain, who I've said plenty of unkind words about over the last year or so, is wrangling with his party and trying to convince them to make a positive contribution and not aim solely to sink the Obama administration. Obama's budget passed on a party-line vote, but during the debate, John McCain was pushing for the GOP to put forward a full alternative budget which would suggest a vision of how they wanted to move forward. The GOP platform seems to be a completely context-free, generic "More tax cuts, less spending, more aggression, fewer earmarks" platform. McCain is absolutely guilty of wearing all of those hats and wearing them until they're threadbare. But a fully fleshed out proposal planning out how those principles would help the country would be a far better contribution to the public discourse than the reflexive nay-saying we're getting now. The GOP leaders opposing McCain suggest that it's "not their job" to make a budget since they're in the minority. I would argue that as elected officials and civic leaders it is absolutely their damn job and even when I'm feeling bipartisan (like right now) I'm not giving them an ounce of respect until they show some sort of comprehension that they have responsibilities to accomplish things. Until then, much to my chagrin, I'll have to look to John McCain to provide principled leadership on the right.
  
  
• Charles Krauthammer. No, really. Stop laughing! I cite as evidence that Krauthammer is providing a valuable discourse his column from last Friday. He laughs off the conservative hysteria over Obama's promise to back manufacturer warrantees on all American cars, because he knows that that's a sideshow for Obama.
  

  Obama has far different ambitions. His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.

  All of this is, as far as I can tell, is completely accurate. As a liberal, I see no problems with this. I think healthcare is a right and I have no problem saying it. I believe in levelling the economic playing field enough that opportunity is equalized (though absolutely not the rewards for utilizing those opportunities), and I have absolutely no problem using taxes on pollution to help do it. I see Krauthammer as so valuable to the debate because I think he is as brilliant analytically as he is amoral. He is interested in strength, intelligence, and success. Human rights are a principle to be fought for in words, as a tool for condemning other countries, but have no meaning to him. Social justice is folly, and weakness. Conciliatory foreign policy is something to be mistrusted. But as I think I've made evident by now, my interest is in generating valuable, considered dissent, which Krauthammer never fails with. Liberals don't trust Goldman Sachs, and they shouldn't. By the same token, Krauthammer doesn't trust Russia, and as far as I can see, he shouldn't. We need men like Barack Obama to create a vision of an America worth living in, who are wary of unregulated markets. And we need people like Charles Krauthammer who are devoted to their cold analysis to remind us that sometimes paranoia is justified, that being nice can't be our only foreign policy, the government won't fix human nature, and who will take the baby out of the bath before we dump the water. When I read his columns, I'm often enraged. But I've found that there are two types of partisan rage: the kind where someone is spouting nonsense and people are paying attention, and the kind where you're furious because someone has made a logical point that contradicts your political dogma. More often than not, Krauthammer incites the latter. Many liberals mourned just as conservatives did over the death of William F. Buckley because he was dedicated to the truth as he saw it, to his idea of a better America, not to his party. I won't go so far as to state that Krauthammer is on the same level as Buckley, but I do believe his loyalty lies in the same place, and he's a better option than Jonah Goldberg, Ramesh Ponnuru, or any of those other goofs at the National Review.
  

I suppose what I'm trying to get out of this is that I'm gradually starting to have more faith in the "marketplace of ideas" than I have in my lifetime. We have a good president with a nimble intellect who is willing to listen to his opposition. In addition to a liberal population that got their shouting muscles warmed up during the Bush presidency calling for action on the left, there's valuable analysis and even a (limited) desire to propose alternative solutions on the right. And even if it's only represented by three lonely senators whose party has them on the chopping block, at least someone in the elected opposition is willing to listen. What I want from Washington is for Barack Obama to push as hard as he can for his position, with rational people making principled arguments that he's wrong. And I want him to hear them out, and adopt their ideas when they're worthwhile. This is the beautiful, foolish idealism -- and the challenge -- laid forth by the founding fathers when they gave us our free speech and our democratic republic. I want to see our country get closer to meeting that challenge, and I think it's possible we might be inching forward.



*Anecdotal evidence: the company I work for has a number of its interests wrapped up in development in China. I was able to write all of this at work, almost entirely in one afternoon.

"Sob Story" (or, "I'm Frustrated")

I just watched the full, unedited interview between Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money. I was a little surprised and annoyed this morning when I started seeing a fake news show making headlines on real newspapers, but as I watched the interview unfold, it made more sense. America, as a collective, feels like it has been swindled by the people it trusted to make money for all of us. Stewart was in fine form. He had clips ready for ambush, he never once pulled a punch out of courtesy for a guest who had pretty much folded (literally: watch Cramer's slouch get deeper and deeper through the interview) after the first minute, and he did more than just whine about the failures - he had solutions for how CNBC can stop screwing people. It was stunningly cathartic. Comedy Central has the interview divided into three parts which you can find here, here, and here.

I felt good after that, like I'd gotten some token measure of justice. Then a fellow I (now no longer) work with came in, gave me his personal contact information, and in a voice that wasn't too good at disguising his grief, told me what he was going to be doing with all of his newfound spare time.

You can yell at a child for breaking a glass, but the glass is still broken.

Looking Back and Looking Forward

I wrote this on February 8, 2004. It has been slightly edited to make more sense to people that aren't me.

Saturday morning, I got up much earlier than I wanted to in order to go to the Heartland Cafe, where my father and I heard the delightful words of Barack Obama. If the world is a just place, Barack Obama will be America's first black president (I'm presuming, of course, that George W. Bush will manage to hold out against stunningly talented and straight-shooting political savant Al Sharpton). Everything he said was exactly what needed to be said, he's articulate but not snooty, he's reasonable about his expectations, he has the respect of his peers . . . I want this man to be my senator. You could say that I am a strange overly idealistic youngster who doesn't know his political ass from his political elbow. But afterwards, my dad and I went to the Little Corner Restaurant and he was beaming with admiration. In his words, he hasn't been this excited about a politician since Bobby Kennedy.

The world might be a just place after all. This morning, when I considered what was going to happen today, I wept with joy. We've got a long way to go, but we've got a good man at the helm.

Hmm, guess he isn't too busy these days.

Writing for Slate, Eliot Spitzer discusses the auto industry bailout. His solution? Let the Big Three fight it out to determine which two companies get funding. I wish that I knew more about this issue to comment on the merits of this idea, but I don't. However, upon reading the article, my initial thought was, "And what happens to that third company?" I'm also not sure about his notion of not needing a so-called "car czar," because it certainly seems as if he's auditioning for the role.

Any thoughts?

Rod-Blo Goes to Jail

Today is the day 87% or so of the citizens of Illinois have been waiting for for a long time. Rod Blagojevich has been arrested.



I would like to note briefly that for as much as I am a pretty loyal Democrat, I refused to vote for this creep. I voted for Rich Whitney, whose preferred press photo was of him talking to an inanimate object.

I have nothing but admiration for Pat Fitzgerald. The man is relentless.

A Face for Mount Rushmore

08 September 2003
The Last Portrait of Johnny Cash
from Country Music: The Masters, a collection of photos by Marty Stuart

Whatever.

The Los Angeles Times: Hillary Clinton blows name of next Russian president [27 Feb 2008]

So naturally late in the Ohio debate when it came time for the trick question, the kind of TV interview question that got George W. Bush so much unwanted, embarrassing and prolonged attention in 1999 when he couldn't name the president of Pakistan, Tim Russert claimed later that he looked at both candidates Tuesday night as if to say, 'Who wants this one?' And Clinton seemed to respond. So he asked Clinton first.

The question concerned Russia's so-called presidential elections Sunday to pick a successor to Vladimir Putin. Russert wanted to know what Clinton could tell the world about this new president.

In her 204-word response Clinton worked in how he'd been hand-picked by Putin, how Russia's political opposition has been suppressed and how she'd been critical of the Bush administration on a wide variety of issues regarding Russia.

Then, Russert pounced: "Who will it be? Do you know his name?"

Chances are you don't know his name. But then you're not running for president. We'll never know if the name was known by Obama, who is running for president, because Russert chose to put Clinton on the spot. And she blew it. Although the official transcript partially covers up her mistake. It has Clinton replying, "Medvedev -- whatever."

What a tape actually shows the senator said was, "Meh, uhm, Me-ned-vadah -- whatever."

26 February 2008

"Whatever."

The Heritage Foundation: Russia on the March: The Return of Red Square Parades [11 Feb 08]

As Yogi Berra once said, "This is déjà vu all over again." On May 9, heavy military equipment will once again roll down Moscow's Red Square for the Victory Day military parade. Tanks, missiles, and 6,000 troops will be joined overhead by Su-27 and MiG-29 fighter aircraft and military helicopters. The last time Moscow saw such a display of military hardware on Red Square was in November 1990, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The world should take notice of Russia's increasing militarism. The parade is designed to generate nostalgia among the Russian people and to signal to the U.S., NATO, and Russia's neighbors that Russia's power is back.

...

This is yet another indication from the Kremlin that the so-called "power" ministries and agencies are the bedrocks of the Russian Federation—not democracy, open society, a multiparty system, free media, fair elections, constitutional liberties, and the separation of powers.

...

Russia's rearmament, the parade, its global maneuvers, and its new weapon systems are designed to make others respect Russia as well as deter NATO and the U.S., which Putin sees as a hegemonic superpower seeking to harm Russia. Russia wants to signal that it again has the military means to counter both perceived strategic threats, such as the U.S. missile defense system, and conventional military challenges, such as NATO expansion and the West's superior air power. Fanfare communicates Russia's intentions to tilt the global "correlation of forces" in Moscow's favor and encourages Russia's neighbors to do its bidding and not to challenge its security or its interests.

Russia is back on the world stage with all the attributes of power, including wealth and military might, for all to see. The next U.S. administration will have its hands full dealing with a resurgent Moscow.

07 May 2008

Whatever.

The International Herald Tribune: Putin's presidency to end as protege Medvedev takes Russia's top office [07 May 2008]

Dmitry Medvedev will become the third president of the Russian Federation Wednesday, in an elaborate modern ritual that should remind the world of his country's czarist roots and 21st century wealth.

The 1993 constitution stipulates that the president takes the oath of office "in a ceremonial atmosphere," and there's little risk Medvedev's invitation-only inauguration on the grounds of the Kremlin will fall short of that demand.

Medvedev is scheduled to stride into an opulent throne room in the Grand Kremlin Palace around noon after an honor guard enters with a folded Russian tricolor and the presidential flag, according to Russian officials and state-run media.

Czar Alexander II's coronation ceremony was held in the palace in 1856, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

...

Medvedev's inauguration will be followed Friday by a Victory Day parade celebrating the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, with tanks and missile launchers rolling across Red Square for the first time since the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse.

While the military parade will evoke memories of Soviet military glory, the inauguration ceremony will be more reminiscent of imperial Russia's grandeur.

09 May 2008

Whatever.

The Washington Times: Russia Revives Cold War Aircraft

Russia's venerable Tupolev Tu-95 bomber is a gigantic, lumbering and slow behemoth that flies with turbine-driven propellers. It has an engine technology the U.S. Air Force wouldn't have been caught dead with since before 1950. So how come it poses a formidable strategic threat to the United States and its NATO allies in the 21st century?

The giant Tu-95 (NATO designation: Bear) was one of the signature aircraft of the Cold War. It played center stage again in the past month along with the vastly faster and more formidable Tupolev Tu-160 White Swan (NATO designation: Blackjack) in the largest strategic exercises the Russian air force has conducted in nearly a quarter century.

During the exercises, code-named Stability-2008, Tu-95MS Bears fired live air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM). It was the first time since 1984 - and just the second time in history - the giant aircraft had done that in any exercise.

But those cruise missiles are what have given the Tu-95 an unlikely but formidable new lease on life in the 21st century. Russia's KH-55 ALCMs (NATO designation: AS-15 Kent) are very good indeed. They fly three times as fast as their American counterpart, the venerable Tomahawk ALCM. The Tomahawk is subsonic, but the KH-55 can fly three times as fast. It has a maximum speed of more than 1,900 miles an hour, Mach 2.8, at sea level, and a range of 2,000 miles. That means that if the KH-55 AS-15 Kents are launched outside U.S. legal airspace in a surprise attack, they could hit any target anywhere in the United States when fired from off the Eastern Seaboard or the West Coast.

It certainly is true that the slow old Tu-95MS Bear, with a cruising speed of less than 500 mph, would be easy pickings for U.S. air-superiority fighters defending the homeland. They even would have been shot down like giant flies 46 years ago if the Cuban Missile Crisis had escalated to a thermonuclear showdown between the superpowers.

Nevertheless, the long range of the KH-55 AS-15 Kents means the Tu-95MS Bears have been transformed once again into a formidable strategic weapons system - vastly more dangerous than they were in the 1950s, when they were the best the Soviet Union had to offer.

Today, Tu-95s can fly holding-pattern patrols 1,500 miles to 2,000 miles away from any prospective targets along the U.S. East and West coasts and far beyond the range of any homeland-based U.S. Air Force fighter squadrons.

Yet by staying airborne, any one or two TU-95s at any time can remain invulnerable to U.S. land- and submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missiles targeted on Russian Strategic Missile Forces bases or Russian air force bases. Their cruise missiles are vastly more difficult to intercept than a conventional intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) because they do not fly in straightforward and easily predictable ballistic flight paths. Nor do they have limited in-flight maneuvering and evasion capabilities that the most modern Russian ICBMs such as the Topol-M have.

Instead, cruise missiles are programmed to fly along the contours of the Earth - flying around or up and over mountains and hills or even following the course of rivers. Therefore, they are far more difficult to intercept, especially because they also are programmed to fly very low, confounding the most sensitive and effective U.S. radar systems that are designed to enable ground-based midcourse interceptors to home in on and destroy ICBMs in midflight.

Each Tu-95 can carry and launch as many as six KH-55 ALCMs. They are far cheaper and easier to maintain and operate than the huge, supersonic Tu-160 Blackjacks, and the Kremlin has far more of them.

According to a recent report from the RIA Novosti news agency, the Russian air force operates no fewer than 40 Tu-95MS Bears, compared with just 16 Tu-160 Blackjacks.

Add up all these advantages, and it looks as if the Tu-95 may be around for a few more decades yet.

24 September 2007

Whatever.

The Australian: Russian warplanes fly over US carrier [13 Feb 2008]

WASHINGTON: Two Russian Tupolev 95 Bear bombers overflew a US aircraft carrier in the western Pacific at the weekend, prompting US fighter jets to scramble, a defence official said yesterday.

US fighter planes intercepted the Russian bombers flying unusually close to the aircraft carrier in the western Pacific.

The official said one Tu-95 buzzed the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at an altitude of about 610m [2000 ft], while another circled about 91km [50 nautical miles] out. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because the reports on the flights were classified as secret.

The incident on Saturday, which never escalated beyond the flyover, comes amid heightened tensions between the US and Russia over US plans for a missile defence system based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Such Russian bomber flights were common during the Cold War, but have been rare since.

The bombers were among four Tu-95s launched from Rusia's Ukrainka air base, about 1000km [621 miles] northwest of Vladivostok, in the middle of the night, including one that Japanese officials say violated their country's airspace over an uninhabited island south of Tokyo.

US officials tracked and monitored the bombers as two flew south along the Japanese coast, and two others flew farther east, coming closer to the Nimitz and the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton.

As the bombers got to about 800km [497 miles] out from the US ships, four F/A-18 fighters were launched from the Nimitz, the defence official said.

The fighters intercepted the Russian bombers about 80km [50 miles] south of the Nimitz.

At least two US fighters trailed the bomber as it came in low over the Nimitz twice, while one or two of the other US fighters followed the second bomber as it circled.

The official said there were no verbal communications between the US and the Russians and that the Pentagon had not heard of any protests being filed. Historically, diplomatic protests have not been filed in such incidents as they were so frequent during the Cold War era.

This is the first time Russian Tupolevs have flown over or interacted with a US carrier since 2004.

11 February 2008

Whatever.

11 August 2008

Whatever.

The International Herald Tribune: Russia test-fires ballistic missiles [12 Oct 2008]

Russia test-fired long-range ballistic missiles Sunday as President Dmitri Medvedev pledged to build up the country's armed capabilities.

The military fired a Topol intercontinental missile from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwest Russia at a target thousands of kilometers away in the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. Submarines in the Okhotsk Sea near Japan and the Barents Sea launched ballistic missiles that reached northern Russia and Kamchatka, the state broadcaster Vesti-24 reported.

"This shows that our shield is in order," Medvedev said Sunday at Plesetsk. "We will build up our armed capability, which means we will acquire new weaponry while also launching traditional ballistic missiles."

The purpose of the Plesetsk test launch was to confirm the viability of the Topol rocket, which has been in service with Russian forces for 20 years, Vesti reported. The Topol, with a range of 10,000 kilometers, or 6,200 miles, is part of Russia's response to a planned U.S. missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, the state broadcaster cited experts as saying.

...

The statement Sunday was the latest pledge by the Russian head of state to revive the might of the armed forces. Medvedev said Saturday that Russia would resume building aircraft carriers and last month announced that Russia would build more new submarines. The president also said that the country's nuclear deterrent should be upgraded within 12 years.

Seeking to assert its power after a decade of oil-fueled economic growth, Russia announced that it would increase defense spending 26 percent to a post-Soviet record of 1.28 trillion rubles, or $48 billion, next year.

Russia must achieve "supremacy in the air, in delivering high-precision strikes against land and sea targets and in the rapid deployment of forces," Medvedev said late last month.

Russia has stepped up protests since the Czech Republic and Poland agreed to host elements of a U.S. missile-defense system. Amid a chill in ties with the West caused by an August war with neighboring Georgia, Russia has warned it would respond militarily by targeting the sites.

12 October 2008

Whatever.

05 November 2008

Whatever.

The New York Times: Clinton Decides to Accept Post at State Dept., Confidants Say [ 21 Nov 08]

As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton will have had a powerful platform to travel the world and help repair relations with other countries strained after eight years of President Bush’s policies.

...

Mrs. Clinton would bring a distinctive background to the State Department. As first lady, she traveled the world for eight years, visiting more than 80 countries, not only meeting with foreign leaders but also villages, clinics and other remote areas that rarely get on a president’s itinerary. Mr. Obama during the primaries belittled that experience as little more than having tea and pointed to schedules showing many ceremonial events on those trips.

29 February 2008

Change? Whatever.

Filling the New Cabinet, Part IV: Defense

The Contenders

- Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE, 1997-present): President, McCarthy and Company (1991-1996); President and CEO of United Service Organizations (1987-1990); Deputy Director/Chief Operating Officer, Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations (1990); Deputy Administrator of Veterans Affairs (1981-1982); Sergeant, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, IV Corps, Vietnam, United States Army (1967-1968)

- Dr. Robert Gates: Secretary of Defense (2006-present); President of Texas A&M University (2002-2006); Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University (1999-2001); Independent Lecturer (1993-1999); Director of Central Intelligence ["CIA Director"] (1991-1993); Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs ["Deputy National Security Advisor"] (1989-1991); Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (1986-1989); Deputy Director for Intelligence, CIA (1982-1986); Director of the DCI/DDCI Executive Staff, CIA (1981-1982); Director of the Strategic Evaluation Center, Office of Strategic Research, CIA (1979-1981); Staff, National Security Council (1974-1979); Intelligence Officer, CIA (1969-1974); Intelligence Officer, Strategic Air Command, United States Air Force (1967-1969); Staff, Central Intelligence Agency (1966)

Sen. Hagel

Sen. Obama, Gen. Petraeus, and Sen. Hagel in Iraq, 21 July 2008

"As I’ve said here before, if Steve McQueen had ever been elected to the U.S. Senate, he would have been Chuck Hagel."

- D. Allan Kerr, The Portsmouth Herald

I have yet to watch Steve McQueen's 1978 production of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, but most assuredly, if Chuck Hagel is the Steve McQueen of the United States Senate, it is as much due to his role as the Republican Party's Dr. Thomas Stockmann (minus the ego) as it is for his background as a highly decorated war hero.

Sen. Hagel, who in 2002 was branded "Sen. Skeptic (R., France)" by the increasingly neoconservative National Review for his strong rebuke of Gen. Colin Powell and President Bush following the "Axis of Evil" speech, has been the subject of scorn among the PNAC set for his non-ideological, realist foreign policy views.

“Conservatives, I’ve always known, like this guy up there,” [Hagel] said, gesturing to a framed picture of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “and Reagan, Goldwater, and others—[Sen. Robert] Taft, Mr. Conservative—were very protective in conserving our resources. And what is more significant in a country’s resource inventory than its people, its army? I think we have used our military recklessly and carelessly. I don’t think that’s conservative.” He continued, “I find it fascinating sometimes when I am challenged on this. I think I am the real conservative on the Iraq debate here.”

President Bush’s loyal congressional supporters, bolstered by the base, beg to differ. They find Hagel’s brand of realist internationalism, his hammering away at the Iraq policy as a misbegotten adventure akin to the Vietnam War he nearly died in, quite noisome. They’ve called him an appeaser, a traitor even. A personally popular senator with 35-year-old ties to the Republican Party, his detractors have done everything to marginalize him.

...

“As far as foreign policy is concerned, they [the conservative base] regard him as an apostate,” [Ross Baker] added. “These are people who believe that anybody who contradicts the president has to be cast out into the darkness.

- The American Conservative, 09 April 2007

While he did vote for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, Sen. Hagel's floor speech was filled with prescience:

Because the stakes are so high, America must be careful with her rhetoric and mindful of how others perceive her intentions. Actions in Iraq must come in the context of an American-led, multilateral approach to disarmament, not as the first case for a new American doctrine involving the preemptive use of force. America’s challenge in this new century will be to strengthen its relationships around the world while leading the world in our war on terrorism, for it is the success of the first challenge that will determine the success of the second. We should not mistake our foreign policy priorities for ideology in a rush to proclaim a new doctrine in world affairs. America must understand it cannot alone win a war against terrorism. It will require allies, friends, and partners.

American leadership in the world will be further defined by our actions in Iraq and the Middle East. What begins in Iraq will not end in Iraq. There will be other ‘‘Iraqs.’’ There will be continued acts of terrorism, proliferating powers, and regional conflicts. If we do it right and lead through the U.N., in concert with our allies, we can set a new standard for American leadership and international cooperation. The perception of American power is power, and how our power is perceived can either magnify or diminish our influence in the world.

...

How many of us really know and understand much about Iraq, the country, the history, the people, the role in the Arab world? I approach the issue of post-Saddam Iraq and the future of democracy and stability in the Middle East with more caution, realism, and a bit more humility. While the people of the Arab world need no education from America about Saddam’s record of deceit, aggression, and brutality, and while many of them may respect and desire the freedoms the American model offers, imposing democracy through force in Iraq is a roll of the dice. A democratic effort cannot be maintained without building durable Iraqi political institutions and developing a regional and international commitment to Iraq’s reconstruction. No small task.

To succeed, our commitment must extend beyond the day after to the months and years after Saddam is gone. The American people must be told of this long-term commitment, risk, and costs of this undertaking.

We should not be seduced by the expectations of ‘‘dancing in the streets’’ after Saddam’s regime has fallen, the kites, the candy, and cheering crowds we expect to greet our troops, but instead, focus on the great challenges ahead, the commitment and resources that will be needed to ensure a democratic transition in Iraq and a more stable and peaceful Middle East. We should spend more time debating the cost and extent of this commitment, the risks we may face in military engagement with Iraq, the implications of the precedent of United States military action for regime change, and the likely character and challenges of a post-Saddam Iraq. We have heard precious little from the President, his team, as well as from this Congress, with a few notable exceptions, about these most difficult and critical questions.

...

While I cannot predict the future, I believe that what we decide in this Chamber this week will influence America’s security and role in the world for the coming decades. It will serve as the framework, both intentionally and unintentionally, for the future. It will set in motion a series of actions and events that we cannot now
understand or control.

In authorizing the use of force against Iraq, we are at the beginning of a road that has no clear end.

Since this speech, Sen. Hagel admitted he regrets supporting the authorization, building a reputation as one of the most reliable and principled critics of the Iraq War. More interesting still is Hagel's role in recognizing the original intent behind the White House's original draft of the Iraq War Resolution, revealed nearly five years later in a January 2007 interview with Wil S. Hylton of GQ magazine:

GQ: Do you wish you’d voted differently in October of 2002, when Congress had a chance to authorize or not authorize the invasion?

Hagel: Have you read that resolution?

GQ: I have.

Hagel: It’s not quite the way it’s been framed by a lot of people, as a resolution to go to war. That’s not quite what the resolution said.

GQ: It said, “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.”

Hagel: In the event that all other options failed. So it’s not as simple as “I voted for the war.” That wasn’t the resolution.

GQ: But there was a decision whether to grant the president that authority or not.

Hagel: Exactly right. And if you recall, the White House had announced that they didn’t need that authority from Congress.

GQ: Which they seem to say about a lot of things.

Hagel: That’s right. Mr. [Alberto] Gonzales was the president’s counsel at that time, and he wrote a memo to the president saying, “You have all the powers that you need.” So I called Andy Card, who was then the chief of staff, and said, “Andy, I don’t think you have a shred of ground to stand on, but more to the point, why would a president seriously consider taking a nation to war without Congress being with him?” So a few of us—Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I—were invited into discussions with the White House.

GQ: It’s incredible that you had to ask for that.

Hagel: It is incredible. That’s what I said to Andy Card. Said it to Powell, said it to Rice. Might have even said it to the president. And finally, begrudgingly, they sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.

GQ: It wasn’t specific to Iraq?

Hagel: Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.

GQ: They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East?

Hagel: Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.

GQ: But that should also have triggered alarm bells about what they really wanted to do.

Hagel: Well, it did. I’m not defending our votes; I’m just giving a little history of how this happened. You have to remember the context of when that resolution was passed. This was about a year after September 11. The country was still truly off balance. So the president comes out talking about “weapons of mass destruction” that this “madman dictator” Saddam Hussein has, and “our intelligence shows he’s got it,” and “he’s capable of weaponizing,” and so on.

GQ: And producing a National Intelligence Estimate that turned out to be doctored.

Hagel: Oh yeah. All this stuff was doctored. Absolutely. But that’s what we were presented with. And I’m not dismissing our responsibility to look into the thing, because there were senators who said, “I don’t believe them.” But I was told by the president—we all were—that he would exhaust every diplomatic effort.

GQ: You were told that personally?

Hagel: I remember specifically bringing it up with the president. I said, “This has to be like your father did it in 1991. We had every Middle East nation except one with us in 1991. The United Nations was with us.”

GQ: Did he give you that assurance, that he would do the same thing as his father?

Hagel: Yep. He said, “That’s what we’re going to do.” But the more I look back on this, the more I think that the administration knew there was some real hard question whether he really had any WMD. In January of 2003, if you recall, the inspectors at the IAEA, who knew more about what Saddam had than anybody, said, “Give us two more months before you go to war, because we don’t think there’s anything in there.” They were the only ones in Iraq. We hadn’t been in there. We didn’t know what the hell was in there. And the president wouldn’t do it! So to answer your question—Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.

GQ: And you feel like you were misled?

Hagel: I asked tough questions of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld before the war: How are you going to govern? Who’s going to govern? Where is the money coming from? What are you going to do with their army? How will you secure their borders? And I was assured every time I asked, “Senator, don’t worry, we’ve got task forces on that, they’ve been working, they’re coordinated,” and so on.

GQ: Do you think they knew that was false?

Hagel: Oh, I eventually was sure they knew. Even before we actually invaded, I had a pretty clear sense of it—that this administration was hell-bent on going to war in Iraq.

GQ: Even if it meant deceiving Congress?

Hagel: That’s right.

"The difference between Hagel and [Sen. John] Edwards," wrote Kelley Vlahos of The American Conservative, "may be that Hagel’s change of heart never smacked of political convenience – in the manner of a maverick, he’s risked alienation from his party, his friends, his support back home. He doesn’t — yet — seem to be animated by obvious political ambition." Writing in 2006, John Nichols of The Nation said of Sen. Hagel:

Hagel has long been blunter than his Democratic colleagues about the disaster that the Iraq occupation has become for the U.S. The Nebraska Republican was making comparisons between the Vietnam War, in which he served, and the Iraq imbroglio months ago -- at a point when most Senate Democrats were holding their tongues.

...

Democrats should be asking themselves: Why is a Republican taking the lead on the issue that played such a pivotal role in putting Democrats in charge of the House and Senate?

The honest answer is an unsettling one.

Right now, Hagel is sounding more realistic and responsible than most if not all of the Democrats who are positioning themselves for 2008 presidential runs. Indeed, with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, the first senator to call for an withdrawal timeline, out of the running, Democrats could use a candidate who speaks as directly as does Hagel about the need to get out of Iraq. While it is true that Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who may or may not be running, is a Democrat who has started to make some of the right noises, Obama has not begun to equal the directness of Hagel's declaration that: "The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose."

Not only a man capable of highly accurate foresight, Sen. Hagel isn't one to mince words. I recommend to your viewing the following footage of Sen. Hagel speaking at a 24 January 2007 meeting of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations:



In November 2006, Sen. Hagel wrote that the United States had "misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam." On 11 January 2007, the day after President Bush delivered his "New Way Forward" speech articulating the proto-Surge, Sen. Hagel blasted Secretary of State Condolezza Rice in a Foreign Relations Committee hearing, stating:

When you were engaging Chairman Biden on this issue on the specific question of, "Will our troops go into Iran or Syria in pursuit [of terrorists], based on what the President said last night?," you cannot sit here today — not because you’re dishonest or you don’t understand — but no one in our government can sit here today and tell Americans that we won’t engage the Iranians and the Syrians cross-border.

Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia, in fact we did. I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee.

So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous. As a matter of fact, I have to say, Madam Secretary, that I think this speech given last night by this President represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam — if it’s carried out.

I will resist it.

Once again, Sen. Hagel demonstrated foresight. On 27 October 2008, the US launched a helicopter-borne raid into Syria.

Along the way, Sen. Hagel has demonstrated that he hasn't forgotten his roots as an enlisted man. When grilling Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker in front of the Foreign Relations Committee on 11 September 2007, Sen. Hagel spoke up for comrades in arms two generations his junior [section below starts at 6:22 in]:

Let's get above the underbrush and look at the strategic context, which, essentially, we have never done.

It's not your fault, General. It's not Ambassador Crocker's fault. It's this administration's fault. We have never, ever looked at Iraq from the larger strategic context, of not Iraq only but Iran, Syria, and the Middle East.

Now, where is this going to go?

Because the question that is going to continue to be asked -- and you all know it and you have to live with it -- and when you ask questions, as we all do, about is it worth it, the continued investment of American blood and treasure, when Senator Dodd presents to do [sic] the evaluation of one lonely enlisted man -- and by the way, I assume you read The New York Times piece ["The War as We Saw It"] two weeks ago -- seven NCOs [Non-Commissioned Officers] in Iraq, today, finishing up 15 month commitments.

Are we going to dismiss those seven NCOs? Are they ignorant?

They laid out a pretty different scenario, General, Ambassador, from what you're laying out today.

Senator Biden said to me once -- I think it was on our first trip to Iraq. He turned around and I was gone. He said: "Where did Senator Hagel go? "

He found me out talking to the guys in the jeep, the Corporals and the Sergeants who have to do the dying and the fighting.

I've always found that, if you want an honest evaluation, and not through charts, not through the White House evaluations, you ask a sergeant or a corporal what they think.

I'll bet on them every time, as I know you will, General. I know you will.

His dedication to his fellow veterans is longstanding and not without a dedication to duty which has brought Sen. Hagel to sacrifice himself personally and professionally for his beliefs:

“I think the world of Chuck Hagel,” [Rick Weidman, Vietnam vet and the Vietnam Veterans of America's head of government affairs] said, recalling how Hagel quit his job as deputy administrator for the Veterans Administration in 1982. His boss, then-Veterans Administrator Robert Nimmo, had a history of antagonizing Vietnam vets, calling them “crybabies” and seeking to cut off research into the physical effects of Agent Orange exposure, wrote [Charlyne] Berens in Moving Forward.

Hagel quit and was unemployed at the age of 36; Nimmo soon resigned amid a threatening scandal over his use of the office for personal gain. To many, Hagel was a hero all over again.

“He resigned over principle, it was a wonderful scene,” Weidman said, noting that Hagel immediately became “our champion in the Senate” when he was elected in 1996.

Furthermore, this past year Sen. Hagel threw his support wholeheartedly behind a proposal of fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) to provide modern education benefits for American veterans, similar to the original post-WWII GI Bill. The Webb-Hagel GI Bill was passed into law as the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008.

Finally, Sen. Hagel has proven himself a man of his word. Though it would have been exceedingly easy for him to win re-election this year given his popularity in his district (he won reelection in 2002 with 82.76% of the vote), Sen. Hagel stood by a promise he made in 1996 to limit himself to two terms in the Senate:

I support Term Limits. However, I will not need Term Limits. Twelve years in Congress is enough for anyone. We should return to the Founding Fathers' concept of the "citizen-legislator," and Term-Limits [sic] would help preserve that ideal. When elected officials stay too long in the same job, they become institutionalized and co-opted by the system.

Sen. Hagel announced his retirement from the Senate on 09 September 2007, and published a book - America: Our Next Chapter - in early 2008 [Full disclosure: Admittedly, I'm a Chuck Hagel fan, and I have a first edition hardcover of his book.] Earlier this year he had been considered by many as a potential Unity '08 presidential nominee, but he declined to run for office. It seems to me that the United States could use an "enemy of the people" like Senator Hagel in a very senior Cabinet role, be it Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State.

Dr. Gates

Perhaps the highest praise of Dr. Gates is to recognize simply that he is not Donald Rumsfeld. One can not, for instance, reconcile the following video with the personality of Rumsfeld, "the nation's square-jawed, harsh-talking, heartless Secretary of Defense, an existentialist on the order of Albert Camus' Meursault" and most dangerous American technocrat since Robert McNamara.







Rumors that President-elect Obama will likely ask Dr. Gates to say on as Secretary of Defense speak volumes on Dr. Gates' credibility and track record since taking over at the Pentagon on 05 December 2006. As acknowledged by TIME, Secretary Gates "has won praise on Capitol Hill for arguing that U.S. foreign policy is too militarized, and for firing senior officers and officials he deemed to have failed the nation's wounded vets and to have been derelict in ensuring the security of America's nuclear weapons." [links mine] From these actions it is clear that Secretary Gates has returned accountability, a key component of military culture, to the Pentagon after its conspicuous absence under Donald "I'm working my way over to figuring out how I won't answer [your question]" Rumsfeld.

Dr. Gates also declined to renominate General Peter Pace for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in June of 2007, expecting the confirmation process to be a "divisive ordeal." Pace had "been criticized by some senior officers who saw him as too deferential to civilian leadership, in particular former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and too inattentive to the impact of prolonged war-fighting on the Army, Marines and their National Guard and Reserve elements." Secretary Gates instead recommended Adm. Michael Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations, for the post.

"Gates is a great choice because of the respect he has gained from all quarters after the fiasco that went before," says Anthony Zinni, a retired four-star Marine who once headed the U.S. Central Command. "He would also provide continuity at a critical time."

General Zinni's statements have been echoed by others as well:

Understand that on the Hill, after Rummy, Gates was like a blast of fresh air. People found him candid and responsive (as opposed to arrogant and dismissive). I think most Democratic senators actually like and respect him, and most staff seem comfortable with keeping him on for some defined period.

Maybe that's a sad reflection of how low Rummy set the bar -- that we celebrate mere competence and professionalism -- but there you go.

Opines Josh Marshall of TPM:

Let me be clear, I do not have a negative impression of Bob Gates. He's mainly had the unlucky task of picking up after the mess created by Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and President Bush. My sense is that Gates is a pretty sane guy and highly capable foreign policy hand. And that's managed to come through even through the heavily cloaking effect of having to operate within President Bush's inane foreign policies. I don't think I know enough about Gates or the particulars of his administration of the Pentagon -- to the extent that can be distinguished from the necessity of operating under President Bush -- to give any qualified appraisal of him. But certainly he is much more in the [Gen. Brent] Scowcroft, rough-realist school than anything from the [George W.] Bush mold.

In other words, Secretary Gates has in common with the foreign policy team of the George H. W. Bush administration than the administration of his son. Further more, it appears that Gen. Scowcroft, who served as National Security Advisor for both Gerald Ford and Bush 41, and who since has "been involved in a multi-year rearguard battle against the neocons in the Bush administration, especially in key efforts trying to block sundry wars with Iran, shut down John Bolton, etc" is attempting to bring the Gates and Obama teams together in a "de facto alliance."

This mutual cooperation on foreign policy bodes well for the country. Truthdig's Joe Conason connects the dots:

Remember that during the months before President Bush asked him to replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Gates was serving on the Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton. The study group’s best-selling report, released only weeks after Mr. Gates resigned to accept the Bush appointment, was strongly critical of the president’s failed policies in Iraq.

Contrary to policies favored by President Bush at the time, the report urged immediate diplomatic contacts with all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, in an effort to achieve stability, as well as negotiations with the Sunni insurgents that would lead to amnesty. The aim of those efforts was to achieve an orderly withdrawal of American troops from Iraq sooner rather than later. The report expressed deep worry that the Iraq war had diverted military and diplomatic resources away from the conflict in Afghanistan.

The Iraq Study Group’s recommendations and concerns sound familiar because they reflect the views expressed repeatedly by Obama ever since he announced his presidential candidacy. When President Bush largely rejected the ISG findings, his new secretary of defense felt obliged to distance himself from them as well. But according to the panel’s other members, it was Gates who had in fact written much of the report, and he concurred fully with its views.

Upon assuming control of the Pentagon, Gates did his best to subordinate his own opinions to administration policy, working hard to make the best of the troop escalation in Iraq despite personal doubts about the long-term wisdom of the “surge.” But he never echoed the Bush administration’s official hostility to a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq—and in fact at one point praised the debate over timetables in Washington as a means of increasing pressure on the Iraqis to achieve reconciliation and security on their own.

That should sound familiar, too, because it is so close to Obama’s stated policy.

The consensus, then, is that Secretary Gates is a competent civilian administrator who happens to be live in a similar foreign policy neighborhood to the President-elect.

"He's not ideological, he's not partisan, and you could trust him to manage the wars in a competent manner while a new administration gets up to speed," said Nancy Soderberg, a Democrat and onetime U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "It would allow the Obama administration to hit the ground running."

- The Wall Street Journal, 11 November 2008

Should President-elect Obama decide to retain Dr. Gates as Secretary of Defense, it would be a most prudent choice.

Note:

I had originally included Richard Danzig, Secretary of the Navy from 1998-2001, and Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) in early drafts of my pool of potential appointees. However, with the recent consistency of rumor surrounding the retention of Secretary Gates, the nomination of either Mr. Danzig or Sen. Reed in his stead seems unlikely and only tied to any reluctance on the part of Dr. Gates to remain in his position. I have included Senator Hagel in this post because his name has been the other most widely circulated, and because I firmly believe that the Obama administration would do well to bring Senator Hagel into the Cabinet at a very high level, either at the State Department or the DoD. Should either Mr. Danzig or Sen. Reed vault back into the top tier of potential appointees, or should I see their names mentioned as a potential National Security Advisor, I will write a special post to cover this omission.