The showdown over Hagel

President Obama set up a bruising confrontation with Senate Republicans by nominating former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel as his secretary of defense.

What happened

President Obama set up a bruising confrontation with Senate Republicans this week by nominating maverick former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel as his secretary of defense. The nomination provoked strongly worded criticism from conservatives and the GOP, who accuse Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran, of being hostile to Israel, soft on Iran, and too much of a dove to oversee the Pentagon. The president also finalized his second-term national security team by nominating his chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, to replace Gen. David Petraeus as director of the CIA. At a White House ceremony, Obama praised Hagel’s military record and described how he once dragged his brother to safety after his brother was wounded by a landmine. “Chuck knows that war is not an abstraction,” said Obama. “He understands that sending young Americans to fight and bleed in the dirt and mud, that’s something we do only when it’s absolutely necessary.”

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