http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/opinion/chuck-hagel-under-attack-in-vietnam-and-on-capitol-hill.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130109&pagewanted=all
HAGEL’S IS A PERSUASIVE STORY OF COURAGE UNDER FIRE AND FAMILY LOVE…..BUT HOW MANY ARE THE DISASTROUS POLICIES ENFORCED BY MEN BRAVE IN BATTLE BUT POOR IN POLICY….THE GENERALS IN ISRAEL….RABIN AND BARAK SHEPHERDED THE DISASTROUS APPEASEMENT IN ISRAEL’S HISTORY…..GENERAL EISENHOWER AS PRESIDENT ENDED THE KOREAN WAR ON A STALEMATE THAT LEFT THE NATION DIVIDED AND HIS SPUTTERINGS ABOUT A “MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX” LED TO THE LARGEST DISARMAMENT LEAVING US VULNERABLE TO SOVIET AMBITIONS…AND THEN THERE IS JOHN McCAIN….ENOUGH SAID…..RSK
IT was a Frank Capra story with a Vietnam War twist. In 1968, a 21-year-old squad leader was riding shotgun on an armored personnel carrier when the Vietcong detonated a land mine. The soldier was on fire, his face a bubbling mass, his eardrums shattered and bleeding. Yet he instinctively reached for the unconscious 19-year-old turret gunner caught in the burning steel cage.
Frantically, he pulled out his comrade, who lay comatose, blood pouring out of his ears. The squad leader tugged at the dead weight and managed to throw him off, jumping down to shield him before the vehicle blew up. Later, at the field hospital, the squad leader asked about the soldier he had brought in, who only months before had saved him when he was felled by flying shrapnel.
“Your brother is alive,” the medic said, “on the bunk next to you.” In an amazing fluke, Chuck Hagel and his brother Tom fought side by side in a unit of 12. At times, because of casualties, the squad was reduced to just the two brothers and four other men. Now Mr. Hagel, a Republican former senator from Nebraska whom President Obama has nominated to be secretary of defense, faces another battle — as a maverick who was once a foot soldier in the conservative Congressional ranks. Attacks have come from hawkish former colleagues, pro-Israel advocates angered that Mr. Hagel once referred to them as “the Jewish lobby,” and gays offended by a 1998 reference to an ambassadorial nominee as “openly, aggressively gay,” a comment for which Mr. Hagel recently apologized.