Israel lobby should not have veto over US president's cabinet

Hagel's presence in the Obama cabinet could easily, in some circumstances, make the difference between war and peace.

If you care about the direction of this country but think you don't have time to pay attention to what the Israel lobby is doing, you may want to think again. This is no conspiracy theory - it is all in broad daylight and the stakes are big, in fact they are matters of life and death right now. As we communicate, the Israel lobby is teaming up with the neocon right to prevent President Obama from choosing his Secretary of Defence.

Now you may think, well the right just prevented him from choosing Susan Rice for Secretary of State, so what's new and different here? The difference is that the fight over Susan Rice was just another stupid partisan fight over nothing, and the Republicans won because they had the power to block her nomination in the Senate. This was just a defeated party scoring points against their enemy, a Democratic president, and they gained absolute nothing as far as US foreign policy is concerned.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121230652285915.html