Confirmation hearing gets testy

Defense-pick Hagel tangles with McCain over ’07 surge

Chuck Hagel, a former two-term senator and President Barack Obama’s choice to lead the Pentagon, arrives Thursday at the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill. Former committee chairman Sam Nunn (left) introduced Hagel.
Chuck Hagel, a former two-term senator and President Barack Obama’s choice to lead the Pentagon, arrives Thursday at the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill. Former committee chairman Sam Nunn (left) introduced Hagel.

— Chuck Hagel clashed with Republican Sen. John McCain on Thursday over the 2007 U.S. troop surge in Iraq, with the nominee for defense secretary refusing to say whether the escalation succeeded.

Their confrontation of raised voices at Hagel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee exposed anew a long festering rift over the Iraq war that helped spawn antipathy toward Hagel among some fellow Republicans.

“I want to know if you were right or wrong,” McCain of Arizona demanded of Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska who opposed the influx of troops under President George W. Bush.

“I would defer to the judgment of history to sort that out,” Hagel said.

“History has already made a judgment on the surge, sir, and you were on the wrong side of it,” said McCain, a fellow Vietnam War veteran who called Hagel an “old friend.”

Hagel, President Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, is confronting skepticism and outright opposition from members of his own party who have questioned his support for Israel, his enthusiasm for tough sanctions on Iran and his willingness to shield the defense budget from sharp spending cuts.

The choice of Hagel, 66, who was awarded two Purple Hearts for wounds received as an Army sergeant in Vietnam, has produced the first confirmation fight of Obama’s second term.

Anticipating criticism over past positions and comments that have fueled weeks of attacks on his nomination, Hagel said his record includes more than 3,000 Senate votes, hundreds of interviews and speeches, and a book.

“But no one individual vote, no one individual quote, no one individual statement defines me, my beliefs, or my record,” he said.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the committee, said after the daylong hearing that Hagel “really advanced his cause” in withstanding hours of criticism by Republican members. Levin said the Armed Services committee may vote on the nomination as soon as next Thursday.

“I thought he did very well,” Levin said. “I thought he was responsive, and I thought he kept his cool.”

In his opening statement to the panel, Hagel said, “We will not hesitate to use the full force of the United States military in defense of our security. But we must also be smart, and more importantly wise - wise - in how we employ all of our nation’s great power.”

While Levin said Hagel has “critically important qualifications to lead the Department of Defense,” the panel’s top Republican reasserted his opposition to the nominee.

“On many of the security challenges facing U.S. interests around the world, Sen. Hagel’s record is deeply troubling and out of the mainstream,” Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma said Thursday. “Too often, it seems, he is willing to subscribe to a worldview that is predicated on appeasing our adversaries while shunning our friends.”

Such Republican criticism may not foretell the fate of Hagel’s nomination. Levin said Hagel is likely to win support from all Democratic senators.

With Democrats controlling 55 of the 100 Senate seats, Republicans could defeat him only if they insist on requiring a super majority of 60 votes to proceed to his confirmation and prevent more than a handful of their members from voting for the nominee.

Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi was the only Republican senator to say before Thursday’s hearing that he supported Hagel.

In addition to their tangle over Iraq, McCain pressed Hagel on whether he would support establishing a no-fly zone in Syria and arming the Syrian rebels. When Hagel said those measures would be reviewed, McCain said, “How many more would have to die before you could support” taking those actions.

Other Republicans went after Hagel’s past votes and comments.

Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, pressed Hagel on whether he still believes that “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here,” as Hagel put it in an interview he gave for a 2008 book by historian Aaron David Miller.

When Wicker asked if he thinks the pro-Israel lobby uses “intimidation,” Hagel said, “I should have used ‘influence’” instead. Hagel has previously apologized for using the term “Jewish lobby,” saying he should have said “the pro-Israel lobby.”

Hagel also was faulted by several Republicans for refusing to sign a congressional letter to the European Union seeking a terrorist designation for the militant Islamist group Hezbollah. Hagel said that while he agrees Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, he didn’t think lawmakers should be instructing foreign leaders.

“It’s our president who conducts foreign policy,” he said.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who said Hagel’s record sends “the worst possible signal” to U.S. adversaries, criticized the nominee for voting against a measure designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Hagel said he was concerned that such a move would permit the president to go to war against Iran without seeking congressional authorization.

Freshman Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas played a tape of Hagel responding to a question on Al-Jazeera television in which he appeared to agree with a questioner’s premise that the U.S. is perceived as “the world’s bully.” Hagel told Cruz he would need to review the context of the remark.

In one instance of bipartisan support, Hagel was introduced Thursday by two former chairmen of the Armed Services Committee: Democrat Sam Nunn of Georgia and Republican John Warner of Virginia.

Retired generals and diplomats, such as former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Air Force Gen. Lester Lyles, also have rallied to Hagel’s defense.

In testimony Thursday, Hagel said that “all options must be on the table” to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. He pledged to “ensure our friend and ally Israel maintains its qualitative military edge.”

Hagel also said he had “serious concerns” about the automatic across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration that will take effect in March unless Congress and Obama agree on an alternative.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 02/01/2013

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