From the NY Times:
Hagel Said to Be Stepping Down as Defense Chief Under Pressure
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is stepping down under pressure, the first cabinet-level casualty of the collapse of President Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate and the struggles of his national security team to respond to an onslaught of global crises.
Much prevarication and diplomacyspeak follows, but in the last paragraph the truth outs.
He raised the ire of the White House in August as the administration was ramping up its strategy to fight the Islamic State, directly contradicting the president, who months before had likened the Sunni militant group to a junior varsity basketball squad. Mr. Hagel, facing reporters in his now-familiar role next to General Dempsey, called the Islamic State an “imminent threat to every interest we have,” adding, “This is beyond anything that we’ve seen.” White House officials later said they viewed those comments as unhelpful, although the administration still appears to be struggling to define just how large is the threat posed by the Islamic State.
The first cabinet-level casualty of the collapse of President Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate? Bullshit. He wasn’t going along with the “Hush it down” war act that the Obamas were selling, a sort of political move analogous to the drones that they use to terrorize their opponents and the “stupid” American electorate.
They’ll never see it coming. We’ll say “It’s just a few advisors. No boots on the ground. This enemy isn’t worth American lives.” Then month by month we’ll ramp it on up.
They couldn’t fire him before the election but they sure can now. They already lost.
Next?
Who knows?
What difference does it make, anyway?
The U.S. military system is now thoroughly broken on every possible level.
Check this out. (From the ever-reliable Bloomberg media empire. Fox News for the smart set.)
Chuck Hagel’s Nuclear Disaster
9 NOV 24, 2014 9:02 AM EST
By The EditorsThe shenanigans that have been going on at U.S. nuclear bases are almost too clownish to believe: officers running a drug ring across six facilities, widespread cheating on monthly proficiency tests, blast doors on missile silos too rusty to properly seal, six nuclear-armed missiles accidentally loaded onto a plane that then flew across the country, and a curious story of crews at three bases FedExing one another an apparently magical wrench used to connect warheads to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
More “Back in the U.S.S.R.” stuff. As the rampant dishonesty endemic within this system has geometrically increased on every level, it has taken the military down with it. Does anyone really think that this sort of idiocy and incompetence does not exist up and down the entire Federal system including our vaunted military? Please. So it goes. Down like a motherfucker.
Bin Laden’s tactic of breaking Russia by constantly pressuring it to win battles on foreign territory has come home to roost here as well. The U.S. is now as crooked an oligarchy as was the U.S.S.R. that Mikhail Gorbachev inherited, and in my opinion any remotely honest leader will…as did Gorbachev…totally fail in any kind of attempt at instituting a comprehensive reform movement.
I await with `bated breath our own Putin, King of Oligarchs.
Any day now.
Aaaaany day now.
Watch.
AG