[Sir Valentino]

*UNBELIEVABLE*!

[Paul Atreides]

"I got beat up pretty good by my own party and the White House that I was not a loyal Republican," he says.

Sounds as if he didn't learn anything from the first beating.

[dead]

Hagel calls it "a major crack in the dike."

Well at least he made fun of Hillary's ass.

[SteveMcKing]

In WW 2, we took the heaviest casulaties the last two years of the war, '44 and '45. We advanced and won during those years.

In Vietnam, '73 and '74 were the lowest years for our casualties - years when we retreated and then lost.

[F-117A]

Hagel is a German boot licker!

[minus_273]

in the end they are politicians. The war is about political will. It is a test of strength. The Viet Cong and Al-Queda dont need to worry about bad press or electoral rivals. Let us hope that the bombings dont grind down more politicians to submission

[COEXERJ145]

Sounds like UpChuck Hagel is going to take the McLame approach to running for President.

[TheDon]

The Rats sacrificed our Nam vets for political gain, now they want to do the same with out Iraq vets. Let's hope they don't get away with it this time.

[DoughtyOne]

Hagelamaniac

[PISANO]

All I can say is THANK GOD, the likes of HAGEL, were not around at the founding of our nation. IF his like were amongst the founding fathers we would still be paying homage to the QUEEN of England and begging the ROYALS for a schilling.

To say that we are LOSING the WAR is beyond belief. To think that it has been a little over two years since Baghdad fell and to see how far the democratic process in IRAQ has come, I can ONLY say it is an astonishing accomplishment.

[A Balrog of Morgoth]

Republican RINO Sens. Lincoln Chafee and Lindsey Graham have voiced their concerns.

Chafee voted against the war in the first place, so it's hardly like his "concerns" are anything new.

Hagel is just the RINO version of Joe Biden.

[onyx]

Spoken like a democrat, and Hagel has presdential aspirations...lol.

[Echo Talon]

Hagel isn't really a Republican.

[Brimack34]

There has got to be a new word for traitor RINO. BUTRINO,SUCKRINO?

[MJY1288]

Hagel is a spineless worm who stands for absolutely nothing. To think this fence sitting populist loser could think he has what it takes to lead this country is a result of how the MSM fawns over him. What this grandstanding invertebrate doesn't understand is.... The MSM only loves him when he speaks out against President Bush and his policies. The proof of this is in the pudding........ How many times have Hagel and McCain been guests on the Sunday Morning talk shows on NBC, ABC, and CBS compared to Frist and McConnell?

Compare this to how many times Democrat Senators not in leadersdhip positions who are guests on the Sunday morning talk shows. Zell Miller is just as much a "Maverick" in his party as McCain or Hagel in the Republican party, but he was hardly ever asked to be on their shows.

Hagel and McCain are quite aware of what gets the media's attention and they're more than willing to say what it takes to get the cameras focused on them. They both need to be voted out.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I would never vote for a "Republican" that advocates cutting and running when the going gets a little tough. Suck it up Chuckybumps. We don't need girlymen in our party.

[nathanbedford]

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Three articles downstream in FreeRepublic, we see this assessment from Victor David Hansen:

We are winning even as we are told we are losing. But the key is that the American people need to be told

Whom to believe?

It seems to me that winging about disloyalty and ambition is perhaps appropriate as the last step after a thorough analysis leads one to conclude that Hagel is wrong and ought not to have said what he says here. On the other hand, if he is right, we need to hear it in a democracy in time to change course and it would be equally wrong to kill the messenger.

I commend the Hansen article for a close reading. If he is right it means Bush is right. It means that Bush has embarked the nation on a course which will ultimately democratize and, may I say it, humanize the whole of the Arab world. Then, in the fullness of time, history, against its will and with gritted teeth, will find itself compelled to define Bush among the giants.

On the other hand, if Bush has got it wrong, or if he fails in execution because of waffling and partisan ambition at home (one doubts that this man will fail because of personal waffling), then he cannot hope to escape the scorn of the kind that has been heaped on Lyndon Johnson for Vietnam.

Hansen begins by reminding us why we fight. In my view we are in a war for national survival against a cult which would murder us in the tens of millions if they could. The odds, as calculated by our CIA, is that they will succeed within a decade. One either accepts that this danger is a real and awful threat or one does not. My neighbors here in Germany, for example, do not. They are in Hagel's camp. Given their basic assumption about the state of the world, their view is not unreasonable.

But if you share the view that eventually a weapon of mass destruction inevitably must be unleashed in our midst in the Homeland, your perspective becomes wonderfully altered as the scales fall from your eyes. You accept that the policy of catching every attempt to smuggle in a nuke or a vial of virus is a policy of folly. The enemy must be destroyed at the source. This is so because one lapse resulting in the mass murder of Americans by a WMD very likely means nothing less than the death of our country, our culture and our democracy as we know it

My problem with Hagel is not that he is factually wrong but that we must play this hand because standing pat is a sure loser.

[GloriaJane]

Here's what I just emailed to Sen. Hagel because I'm so upset. I'm not from his state but I emailed anyway.

Sen. Hagel
I just read in an article that you said you're angry. Then the article goes on to tell us that you said this: "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Well, you think you're angry? You don't even begin to know what angry is until you see a US Senator say the things that Senator Durban did on the floor about Gitmo on C-Span!! And then you read a Republican Senator said the things I just read that you said!!

I am so angry right now I could spit!! Durban needs to resign and YOU need a lesson. Here's one! Did you know that in only one year that 1,889 American citizens were murdered in just THREE cities in the United States??!! Yes! That's right! In 2002 in the City of Chicago 647 Americans were murdered and in the City of Los Angles 658 Americans were murdered and in the City of New York 584 American were murdered!!!

We have been at war in Iraq and have now lost a little over 1,700 for the entire time we have been at war!!! And you cry about pulling out when we lost more Americans in 2002 in just THREE cities here in America?? Three cities! Did that sink in? Just Three cities! Not a whole country! Just three cities!! And we aren't even at war in those three cities!!

You want to cry? Cry about this! How about we pull out of all those deadly blue states??? There are sooooo many more Americans being murdered on the streets of the cities in those deadly blue states then there are Americans killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan put together and during a WAR!!!

And talk about money!! We have spent billions and billions of tax dollars in those deadly blue states for over 200 year's and we aren't winning the war in Chicago, Los Angeles or New York!!! Pull out!!! We can't win!!! Right?

Stupid people don't know they're stupid... because they ARE stupid!

Gloria Jane

[TheForceOfOne]

Liberal polling data shows Bush approval rating way down!!

The worst since prior to the 2004 presidential election!

Gasp!

Could a NY Times & CBS poll be correct?

The Horror!

Well, my God! I guess he is getting close to being impeached for war crimes citizens!

The end is near, we are all doomed I tell you!

Does the liberal B.S. propaganda machine ever rest?
I don't blame them anymore than I do the fools who believe these polls.

We are in a quagmire! The war is lost! S.S. is fine! Gitmo must go! Set the terrorists free! Hillary can't be defeated! etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah!

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Starting to sound like a repeat of the Vietnam war. The media and the rest of the left were able to deminish support for the war here while encouraging the North Vietnamese to just hang on until we quit. Thanks Keery and Fonda. That was the last hoorah for the hippie left and they lust to have those times back.

Opportunists like Hagel and McCain are no different from the Democrats.

[Reader of news]

Hagel is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. If he isn't re-elected in the next election, the GOP will suffer no loss. Having so many RINOs in the Senate, you can understand why Bill Frist can't bring his group into line.