Published: 07 January, 2013, 22:17
Edited: 08 January, 2013, 23:51
President Barack Obama nominated two new members to his administration on Monday, endorsing current counterterrorism advisor John Brennan and former Sen. Chuck Hagel to serve as CIA director and secretary of defense, respectively.
The president, who will be formally sworn in to begin his second term in office in just two weeks, announced his nominations Monday afternoon from the White House in Washington, DC.
“These two leaders have dedicates their lives to protecting our country,” said Pres. Obama. “I’m confident they will do an outstanding job.”
Both Brennan and Hagel have been rumored in recent days to take on new roles within the Obama administration, but only with Monday’s announcement from the president himself did the news become official. A confirmation battle in the Senate is expected to follow the choice for these key posts, although Pres. Obama asked lawmakers to confirm both men “as soon as possible” after making his announcement.
Hagel, a 66-year-old former Republican senator from Nebraska, will replace the current US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon, if confirmed by the Senate. He will also be the first veteran of the Vietnam War to hold the post.
“To this day, Chuck bears the scars and the shrapnel” of service in Vietnam, the president said on Monday.
Accepting the nomination, Sen. Hagel replied, “I am grateful for this opportunity to serve our men and women in uniform again.”
Known as an outspoken critic of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as an opponent of the “Jewish lobby” in Washington and of the possible strike against Iran, Hagel has faced tough criticism for his remarks. On Monday, however, Pres. Obama saluted Sen. Hagel’s “willingness to speak his mind” in Congress, “even if it wasn’t popular.”
“That’s exactly the spirit I want on my national security team,” said the president.
Obama’s administration officials have already dismissed claims of Hagel’s anti-Israel and pro-Iran stance, saying he is “completely in line with the president” on these issues.
“Hagel served in war,” former CIA officer Ray McGovern told RT. “He would be the first Defense Secretary in thirty years to come out of that experience – and that means a difference. When Hagel says he would be very, very careful in employing our forces in fool’s errands such as Afghanistan… he is going to be a very worthy stand-up against people like Brennan, who … have never served our country’s armed forces.“
White House counterterrorism adviser Brennan was chosen by Obama to replace the former CIA head David Petraeus, who stepped down last November.
Brennan, 57, who has worked in the CIA for 25 years and played a key role in the planning of the 2011 raid on Osama Bin Laden, has been behind the controversial US drone program. He advocated the use of drones overseas, calling targeted killing operations “legal, ethical and wise.”
McGovern, who served under nine different CIA directors including Brennan, told RT that “Brennan would have to be the worst choice. He is an open advocate of what is called ‘extraordinary rendition’ – read torture, black prisons, illegal eavesdropping and kill lists.“
President Obama called Brennan “one of our nation’s most skilled and respected” intelligence leaders in the Monday announcement.
“He understands we are a nation of laws. In moments of debate and decision, he asks the tough questions and insists on high and rigorous standards,” he said of his nominee.
Brennan had withdrawn his CIA director nomination back in 2008, as questions about his involvement in extraordinary rendition techniques forced him to assert he was “a strong opponent” of the policies of the George W. Bush administration.
But his nomination comes with unanswered questions about his place in Washington’s spin on American foreign policy.
Brennan is rumored to be the White House official who gave an anonymous press briefing in which he pushed what “basically amounted to a pack of lies about what happened at the Abbottabad compound,” investigative historian Gareth Porter told RT, referring to the compound where Osama bin Laden was found and killed by US forces in 2011.
“He has been identified with a very strange claim, which the White House has tried to put forward, which is that the United States has not been killing any civilians in its drone war in Pakistan – which has clearly been proven untrue as well,” Porter said.
Speaking from the White House on Monday, Brennan said, “Leading the agency I served for 15 years would be the greatest privilege of my life.”
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The Chuck Hagel pick is an excellent choice to bring some moral balance into the Israeli colonialist project. Hagel will be confirmed but not before members of the Senate and their foreign backers are going to have to come out of the shadows and go on record. Hagel’s allegedly “anti-Semitic” comment was, “I’m an American Senator, not an Israeli one.”
The Brennan pick for CIA concerns me because of his record on supporting Torture/rendition & drones but then I don’t know what Obama’s dealing with when it comes to the CIA. We do know this president plans for the long term. In May 2008 before the election, journalist Al Giordano analyzed a speech Obama gave regarding Latin America. Giordano’s take was that Obama approaches historically complex issues as one would a time bomb, which wires do you cut first in order to safely diffuse the bomb. The CIA is certainly a complex agency.
http://www.narconews.com/Issue53/article3110.html
“Obama and the US – Latin American Time Bomb: Defusing U.S. policy toward Latin America requires cutting the wires in proper order.”
BIG BRADLEY MANNING NEWS!!! Judge reduces possible sentence -
“By: DAVID DISHNEAU (AP)
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — A military judge on Tuesday reduced the potential sentence for an Army private accused of sending reams of classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.
Col. Denise Lind made the ruling during a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade for Pfc. Bradley Manning.
Lind found that Manning suffered illegal pretrial punishment during nine months in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. She awarded a total of 112 days off any prison sentence Manning gets if he is convicted.
Manning was confined to a windowless cell 23 hours a day, sometimes with no clothing. Brig officials say it was to keep him from hurting himself or others.
The judge said that Manning’s confinement was “more rigorous than necessary.” She added that the conditions “became excessive in relation to legitimate government interests.”
Manning faces 22 charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a maximum of life behind bars. His trial begins March 6.
The 25-year-old intelligence analyst sought to have the charges against him thrown out, arguing that the military held him in unduly punishing pretrial conditions after his 2010 arrest.
Jailers at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., have testified they considered Manning a suicide risk and that they were only trying to keep him from hurting himself and others by keeping him in a windowless, 6-by-8-foot cell for all but one hour a day.
Prosecutors conceded in December that Manning was improperly held on suicide watch for seven days and recommended he get seven days’ credit at sentencing.
Manning is back at Fort Meade for a pretrial hearing that includes arguments on whether his motivation matters.
Prosecutors want the judge to bar the defense from producing evidence at Manning’s trial regarding his motive for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of secret war logs and diplomatic cables. They say motive is irrelevant to whether he leaked intelligence, knowing it would be seen by al-Qaida
Manning allegedly told an online confidant-turned-informant that he leaked the material because “I want people to see the truth” and “information should be free.”
Defense attorney David Coombs said Tuesday that barring such evidence would cripple the defense’s ability to argue that Manning leaked only information that he believed couldn’t hurt the United States or help a foreign nation.
Manning has offered to take responsibility for the leaks in a pending plea offer but he still could face trial on charges that include aiding the enemy.
The four-day hearing began Tuesday.”
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/gis-hearing-wikileaks-case-focuses-motive