Thank you, neocons. I was hoping we could re-visit this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/us/old-foes-lead-charge-against-chuck-hagel.html

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January 12, 2013

Hawks on Iraq Prepare for War Again, Against Hagel

By JIM RUTENBERG

In the bitter debate that led up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said that some of his fellow Republicans, in their zest for war, lacked the perspective of veterans like him, who have “sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off.”

Those Republicans in turn called him an “appeaser” whose cautious geopolitical approach dangerously telegraphed weakness in the post-Sept. 11 world.

The campaign now being waged against Mr. Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense is in some ways a relitigation of that decade-old dispute. It is also a dramatic return to the public stage by the neoconservatives whose worldview remains a powerful undercurrent in theRepublican Party and in the national debate about the United States’ relationship with Israel and the Middle East.