Mr. and Madame Senator, Have You No Shame?

Mr. and Madame Senator, Have You No Shame?

February 2, 2013 by Mitchell Plitnick
http://mitchellplitnick.com/2013/02/02/mr-and-madame-senator-have-you-no-shame/

There have been several very good pieces written about the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of defense. Here’s a
partial list:
My own early piece on the lunatic right’s opposition to Hagel, a Republican former Senator from Nebraska: http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2012/12/27/chuck-hagel-and-israel-the-wrong-question/
A brief but brilliant piece by Stephen Walt: http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/01/id_like_to_thank_the_senate_armed_services_committee
Yousef Munayyer on the number of appearances, or lack thereof, of various words: http://blog.thejerusalemfund.org/2013/02/the-hagel-hearing-snapshot.html
John Judis in The New Republic http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112306/chuck-hagel-confirmation-hearings-ted-cruz-john-mccain-grill-him
Matt Duss in The American Prospect https://prospect.org/article/senate-hearing-circus-session
And Jim Lobe at Inter Press Service http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/02/its-all-about-israel/
That’s plenty of good stuff. I want to throw in one more point, which some of these folks touched on.
Let’s say there’s a country ruled by an unstable dictator which has a history of irrational actions, and aggressive behavior, including starting armed conflicts. Let’s say further that this country bordered an important US ally and had, in the past, invaded that ally and, in the much more recent past, directed and even fired its weapons at that ally. Let’s say further that this country has nuclear weapons.
There is not a single statement in the above paragraph that is true about Iran. The country in question is North Korea. Yet the SASC saw fit to mention North Korea a mere 11 times, while mentioning Iran 171 times, which was second only to Israel, which got 178 mentions.