Hagel defense nomination passes key US Senate panel 14 to 11.

Hagel defense nomination passes key US Senate panel 14 to 11.(HD).A divided Senate panel approved Chuck Hagel on Tuesday to be the next US secretary of defense, a key step in a process that could see the controversial nominee confirmed as early as this week.
The Senate Armed Services Committee split along party lines to vote 14 to 11, with one abstention, to approve the former Republican senator whose positions on Iran, Israel and the Iraq war sparked concerns by fellow conservatives.
If approved by the full Senate, Hagel would replace outgoing Pentagon chief Leon Panetta.
"We will now favorably report the nomination of Chuck Hagel to the Senate," said committee chairman Carl Levin after a tense two-hour hearing that saw lawmakers verbally sparring over Hagel's qualifications, his occasionally evasive responses to senators' questions and even his patriotism.
Some of the harshest criticism came from Senator Lindsey Graham, who said Hagel was well outside the left or right lanes of American politics on foreign policy.
"When it comes to some of the Iranian (and) Israeli issues, there's the Chuck Hagel lane. He's in a league of his own, guys," Graham said.
"I say dumb things every day." With Hagel, it has been "a series of things, a series of votes, an edge about him that makes many of us very unnerved about his selection at a time when the world is on fire," he added.
Shortly before the vote, Graham told reporters he would seek to put a procedural block on Hagel's confirmation vote, but Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid brushed aside the threat, saying he expected to bring a vote to the Senate floor "this week." Should Reid be forced to overcome Graham's blocking attempt, a vote to proceed would require 60 votes, rather than the simple majority in the 100-seat body if there was a straight up or down vote on confirmation.
Levin told the committee that despite Republican efforts to portray Hagel as "outside the mainstream," the Vietnam War veteran "has received broad support from a wide array of senior statesmen and defense and foreign policy organizations." "If there is a risk here, it is that the defeat of this nomination would leave the Department of Defense leaderless at a time when we face immense budgetary challenges and our military is engaged in combat operations overseas," Levin warned.Read the full story here.

Related: A Hagel and Al Jazeera. HT: Critical Analyst.

It has now been revealed that the government of Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera, was a major contributor to the Atlantic Council when Hagel was its chairman.

The Atlantic Council describes itself as a “preeminent, non partisan institution devoted to promoting transatlantic cooperation and international security.” Hagel is chairman of the group.
Documents released by the Atlantic Council, in response to the controversy over Hagel’s nomination, show funding from several foreign governments, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia. A search also reveals that Atlantic Council officials have been appearing regularly on Al Jazeera, giving the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood credibility as a “news organization.”
According to the council’s own website, these appearances include:

• Barbara Slavin, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, was interviewed on Al Jazeera about the U.S. cyber-attacks against Iran.
• Michele Dunne, director of the Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, appeared on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story Americas to discuss Syria.
• J. Peter Pham, director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, discussed the situation in Mali on Al Jazeera English.
• Barry Pavel, director of the Council’s Program on International Security, appeared on Al Jazeera English’s show Inside Story Americas to discuss the deployment of 200 U.S. Marines to Australia.

In addition to Al Jazeera, Atlantic Council senior fellow Barbara Slavin appeared on the far-left MSNBC cable channel to sing the praises of Hagel as “non-ideological.”
But anti-communist blogger Trevor Loudon points out that Chuck Hagel serves on the board of the Ploughshares Fund, another of the George Soros-funded organizations, and that it is a “partner organization” of the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies.
In addition to his role as chairman of the Atlantic Council and a board member of the Ploughshares Fund, Hagel serves as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, which maintains campuses in Washington, D.C. and Qatar. Funding for the campus in Qatar comes from the Qatar Foundation, established by the ruling family.
Not surprisingly, Al Jazeera has featured interviews with faculty members from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, about the acquisition of Current TV and the violence in Syria. MORE via canadafreepress.com