[New Meh] For Sec. Def, Obama Appoints former killing machine

hey, Hagel was in 'Nam as well, and by all accounts, was very good at gettin' after charlie.

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Barack Obama's pick for defence secretary Chuck Hagel was 'very, very good at killing'
BY: TOBY HARNDEN, WASHINGTON From: The Times January 28, 2013 12:00AM

PRESIDENT Barack Obama's choice for US defence secretary was "very, very good at killing" in Vietnam, witnessed war crimes carried out by drunken American soldiers, and may have inadvertently shot innocent civilians, according to his brother.

Chuck Hagel and his brother Tom volunteered as infantrymen and fought together in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive.

They returned with five Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars between them.

A former senator, Chuck Hagel is poised to become the first Vietnam veteran and the first former enlisted serviceman to run the Pentagon, and has spoken of how his aversion to war was forged in the Mekong Delta.

In the run-up to his Senate confirmation hearings this week, controversy has centred on his dovish stance on Iran, anti-gay comments made in the 1990s, and his criticism of the "Jewish lobby". But his war record has undergone little scrutiny.

In a joint interview with his brother for a book published in 1984, Tom claimed women and children had been killed by their platoon and atrocities committed.


"It all seemed so senseless," he said. "We'd kill and they'd kill, and it didn't mean anything. And both of us were very, very good at killing. The whole process we were good at. We were amazingly proficient at it all. In firefights, we'd shoot hundreds and hundreds of rounds and after we'd walk 100 yards, and see hundreds and hundreds of bodies."

He added: "Women and children. For the longest time, that was the only thing that bothered me. We found women with lots of ammo on and then it didn't bother me as much. But there were all the others. And they didn't have guns - because we saw them after."

When Obama nominated Hagel, 66, a former conservative Republican, as defence secretary this month, he paid tribute to the actions of the two men, telling troops that "just like Sergeant Hagel was there for his own brother, Secretary Hagel will be there for you".

In March 1968, Chuck, then 21, was walking in single file through the jungle with Tom, two years younger, when a soldier ahead triggered a mine and was blown to pieces. Tom was hit in the chest and Chuck in the arm, but they carried on patrolling. Shortly afterwards, Chuck was about to set off a tripwire grenade when Tom shouted at him to freeze.

Weeks later, the brothers were in an armoured vehicle when it hit a mine. Chuck's eardrum was punctured and the left side of his face seared by the explosion, but he was able to pull Tom, who was unconscious, from the wreckage and shield him from incoming fire.

"That night the pain was so intense, I'll just never forget it," Chuck told the author Myra MacPherson. "You don't know how bad you're burnt, what you'll look like. I lay there and I thought, in my whole life, if there's anything I do, it's going to be to try and stop wars."

At the time, the brothers were bitterly divided over the conflict. Chuck viewed it as a noble cause to protect the South Vietnamese from communism while Tom, who is now a law professor at the University of Dayton, Ohio, was tormented by what they had taken part in. Their argument was quoted at length by MacPherson in her book Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation.

Tom told his brother: "We were winning 'hearts and minds', right? What was the name of that alcoholic southern son of a b**** sergeant we had? He was so drunk out that night there near the orphanage. Remember the orphanage, Chuck? We got hit real bad that night. That sergeant was so drunk and pissed off that he crawled up on that track and opened up on that orphanage with a 50-calibre machinegun."

Chuck responded incredulously: "Are you saying he slaughtered children in an orphanage?"

To which Tom replied: "I don't know if he did because none of us went in to check. But I know that he opened up on that orphanage. Just rained on it."

Tom also recounted how a "total incompetent of a first lieutenant" shot dead an unarmed woman as she stepped out of a hut to look at the troops collecting bodies, and how a major ordered a South Vietnamese ally to cut the fingers off enemy dead so that he could take their rings as souvenirs.

This has drawn comparisons to Senate testimony by John Kerry, also a Vietnam veteran, who is about to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. In 1971, he spoke of US troops who "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads".

Tom Hagel, who has suffered post-traumatic stress and depression, declined to discuss his Vietnam experiences. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Chuck Hagel's Vietnam experience has coloured his view of conflict in the 21st century. He opposed the Iraq surge in 2007, describing it as the "most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam".

Since leaving the Senate in 2009, he has also criticised Obama's surge in Afghanistan, where, he said last year, America was "losing" a war that was a "disaster".

He has described the Pentagon as "bloated" and questioned whether even the limited involvement in Libya was in America's interest. Hagel's view is that he will be more careful about sending men to war because Vietnam had taught him that "challenging, probing and questioning is what is patriotic".

However, Max Boot, the author of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare and a former adviser to Mitt Romney, the defeated Republican presidential nominee, said that for Hagel and Kerry, "Iraq compounded the lesson of Vietnam and has led them to even greater non-interventionism". This, he said, could be "calamitous" for America.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-good-at-killing/story-fnb64oi6-1226563034039

 

all wars are elective. you can choose to fight or not.

 

it was a jab at glynch.

 

I've never changed. Look it up.

 

Cruz made Hagel look rather silly today.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Several senators- even undecideds-tell me there's a ton of buzz on senate floor about hagel's lackluster performance. "Shock" is the word</p>&mdash; Dana Bash (@DanaBashCNN) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanaBashCNN/status/297086733865074689">January 31, 2013</a></blockquote>
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