• • Pick a Nominee....ANY Nominee
• • EDITORIAL: Terrorists are the real victims?
• • BREAKING: Islam 'Helped to Shape' CIA Nominee John Brennan's World View
• • Jack Lew's Campaign of Deception

But today we focus on Chuck Hagel and we are asking our Senators to 'Just Say NO' to Chuck Hagel.
Please go HERE to use our VoterVoice system to send Sen. Alexander and Sen. Corker an email asking them to vote NO both on cloture and on the confirmation.
Out-of-state subscribers can find your US Senators HERE.

Chuck Hagel: Weak on Jihad and Terrorism

President Obama has selected one of the worst possible candidates imaginable to become Secretary of Defense. Chuck Hagel has a history of being weak on Jihad and terrorism, the greatest threat to American lives and national security today.

Hagel's nomination should become a "teaching moment." Just because someone served honorably in the uniform of the United States military or has an "R" instead of a "D" after his name, does not automatically mean that the person is strong on national security policy.

Chuck Hagel is as bad on the threat of Jihadist terrorism as anyone in America. Not only has he been on the wrong side of votes on the issue, but his votes demonstrate a lack of commitment on the issue, as well a tendency to enable Jihad:

Wrong on Iraq

Initially, then-Senator Hagel voted in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom to overthrow Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. But when the insurgency did not go so well, Hagel flip-flopped and called for a withdrawal of US troops in just 120 days back in 2007.

Had such a policy been implemented, Al Qaeda and other Jihadist elements would have emerged victorious in Iraq and the US would have been seen as clearly losing Iraq to Al Qaeda. This would have energized Al Qaeda and given it the biggest recruiting boost since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States homeland. This would have essentially allowed the global jihad to morph at an accelerated rate.

Then, when the US announced the surge counteroffensive in Iraq, Senator Hagel said it would be "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out."

Hagel is clearly no military strategist. The surge broke the back of the insurgency, drastically reduced the violence in Iraq and allowed the US to draw down its force levels in a secure manner.

To be sure, Iraq is no utopia today, but violence levels there are no where near what they were during the insurgency and, most importantly, Al Qaeda was denied victory in Iraq due to the surge. Read more here.

• Press Release Announcing Opposition to Hagel Nomination, by Senator Jim Inhofe, January 15, 2013
• Chuck Hagel's Troubling 'Global Zero' Nuclear Arms Stance, by Peter Huessy, January 15, 2013
• Senators voice concerns on Hagel’s Global Zero anti-nuclear views, by Bill Gertz, January 10, 2013
• Hagel hearings should focus on Pentagon mission, by Elaine Donnelly, January 14, 2013

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President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser knows very little about terrorism, and that’s scary for America.

John Brennan, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, asserted in a speech last month that the United States cannot be at war with terrorism because terrorism is only a “tactic.” Terrorism, however, is also a strategy and method, with a long history and extensive theoretical literature. This is why it is an “-ism” and not simply “terror.” It is bewildering that Mr. Brennan would make such a glaring error on such a fundamental concept.

Mr. Brennan also asserted that “violent extremists” are victims of “political, economic and social forces.” This dense statement implies that counterterrorism should focus not on terrorists themselves but the underlying causes that purportedly “victimized” them. It’s similar to the discredited argument that the way to fight urban crime is through big-government social programs rather than putting more police on the beat. Making terrorists into victims also legitimates their grievances, which is a strange way to fight them.

Mr. Brennan’s curious views may be part of a larger move by the O Force to redefine terrorism. According to Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, an effort is under way to revise counterterrorism strategy. Last week, at a speech at the Center for a New American Security, she said, “one of the discussions we’re having in that context is what are the root causes of extremism.”

The anguished quest for the “root causes” of political violence is hardly new. The root cause of terrorism has been the holy grail of counterterrorism research for decades. Most scholars have ruled out the simplistic notion that terrorism is the product of vague social or economic forces or that terrorism arises from backwardness or privation. Were that the case, there would be a great deal more terrorism in the world, and it would not be the hobby of a billionaire’s son like Osama bin Laden. So a strategy that focuses on mitigating supposed root causes is hamstrung by the fact that the causes cannot reasonably be determined and that the United States is incapable of solving the world’s social and economic problems. Read more here.

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As a college student in the 1970s, John Brennan, President Obama's nominee for CIA director, traveled in Indonesia where - he recalled in a speech in New York in 2010 - "despite my long hair, my earring and my obvious American appearance, I was welcomed throughout that country, in a way that is a reflection of the tremendous warmth of Islamic cultures and societies."

Brennan's Feb. 13, 2010 address to a meeting at the Islamic Center at New York University, facilitated by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), provided an insight into his views on Islam, a faith which he said during the speech had "helped to shape my own world view."

Travels around the world over more than three decades had taught him about "the goodness and beauty of Islam," said Brennan, whose 25-year career at the CIA until 2005 included a stint as station chief in Riyadh.  Read more here.

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After the historic midterm elections in 2010, when the GOP took control of the House on a wave of public concern over spending and debt, many believed President Obama would seize the moment as an opportunity to reach a long-term debt agreement. Instead, the opposite happened. Democrats savaged House Republicans for passing a budget with needed reforms and savings, at the same time refusing to lay out a credible plan of their own. It was a calculated and craven political strategy.

At the heart of this strategy was Jack Lew. As the president’s budget director he submitted to Congress the most dangerously irresponsible plan we’d ever seen, one panned by virtually every major editorial board in the country. Mr. Lew then launched a nationwide PR campaign designed to mislead the public about the budget that included false statements in congressional testimony. Most infamously, Mr. Lew claimed his plan “would not add to the debt” and defended this statement as “accurate” when testifying before the Budget Committee. But that plan, according to the White House’s own budget tables, would have added $13 trillion overall to the debt and never once had a deficit of less than $600 billion — with the deficits getting larger with time. In just ten years, mandatory spending would increase by more than 80 percent.

But the truth did not concern Mr. Lew. He had a public-relations campaign to execute. Consider just a few of his many egregious falsehoods:

“Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we’re not adding to the debt anymore; we’re spending money that we have each year, and then we can work on bringing down our national debt.”  Read more here.

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This week, President Obama nominated former Senator Chuck Hagel to be Defense Secretary. He is a typical Obama choice. In other words, atrocious. After his service in Vietnam, for which he is rightfully commended, Hagel went on to the Senate, where he proclaimed anti-Israel views, opposed sanctions against the terrorist regime in Iran, bought into the left-wing propaganda that the Iraq war was solely “about oil,” and supports deeply destructive cuts in the military. He is way out of the mainstream in his thinking and positions about our national defense and how our interests and allies should be protected. In other words, he’s your typical Obama appointment.

As bad as Hagel is, however, he looks like a Boy Scout compared to the other man Obama is nominating on his national defense team: White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan to head the CIA.