Chuck Hagel



Charles Timothy "Chuck" Hagel (born October 4, 1946) is an American military veteran and former politician who served as a United States senator from Nebraska from 1997 to 2009 and as the 24th United States secretary of defense from 2013 to 2015 in the Obama administration. A member of the Republican Party, he was first elected in 1996 and was reelected in 2002. He declined to run for reelection in 2008. He is often characterized as a political maverick and moderate, similar to fellow Vietnam War veteran Republican Senator John McCain.

2005

 * I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president.
 * On Bush, the GOP, and the Patriot Act,

2006

 * If he'd been in the military, he would have learned gun safety.


 * We are the adult power in the world. It is because of the United States, our action or inaction, that there will be a resolution here.


 * We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed.


 * We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam.

2007

 * This is a ping-pong game with American lives. These young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in Baghdad, are not beans. They're real lives. And we better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder.
 * On the Iraq troop surge of 2007,


 * If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. This is a tough business.
 * Asking his fellow Senators to support a joint resolution opposing President George W. Bush's troop deployment plan,

2013

 * I believe, and always have, that America must engage — not retreat — in the world.
 * Transcript: Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense, submitted by Robert Naiman on February 1, 2013 at Justforeignpolicy.org, accessed February 10, 2013.