Last week, former CIA director and NSA chief Gen. Michael Hayden shared that during the George W. Bush administration “the consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.” But in a radio interview yesterday, ex-CIA director James Woolsey pushed in the opposite direction, calling on the Obama administration to consider military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) facilities.

Woolsey, who served as President Bill Clinton’s CIA director from 1993 to 1995, told Aaron Klein, the Jerusalem bureau chief of the right-wing WorldNetDaily, that IRGC facilities and “anything that is related to the thugs that are oppressing the Iranian people” were “fair game” for attacks if Iran moves to close the Strait of Hormuz:

Let it be known that if there is a closing of the Straits of Hormuz or any other aggressive action by Iran — after all we went to war in 1812 over something just about like what Iran says it’s going to do, close the Straits — if we see that [...] virtually nothing that is tied to the Revolutionary Guard is out of our sights.

Woolsey went on to compare the IRGC to “a combination of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Black Shirts” and declared:

If we let it be known that we’re going to be able to do what unfortunately Britain and France were unable to do in [19]36, ’37, ’38, which would be to take out Hitler’s regime. If we let it be known that we can do that in Iran, then I think we’ll be in a much stronger position.

But Woolsey is no stranger to staking out hawkish U.S. foreign policy positions. Last year, he spoke in support of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian exile group currently listed on the U.S. government’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations for its role in the killing of six Americans in the 1970s. Woolsey also serves as chair of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and advocated for the invasion of Iraq through his involvement with the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Woolsey told Klein that the U.S. should send four to five aircraft carriers to the Indian Ocean to retaliate against Iran if it decides to close the Strait of Hormuz — the U.S. has 11 carrier strike groups — and suggested that Obama should emulate Teddy Roosevelt who dispatched the Great White Fleet to circumnavigate the globe for two years.

Indeed, Iran’s nuclear program is comprised of some troubling components. Last week, the IAEA expressed concern that elements of the program could suggest the development of nuclear weapons and the European Union just announced an oil embargo against Iran, banning all new oil contracts with Tehran. But Woolsey is setting himself apart from a growing number of retired American and Israeli intelligence chiefs expressing reservations about the rush to military action against Iran.

The White House’s recent drive to end the war in Afghanistan includes efforts to bring about a negotiated peace with various groups including, but not limited to, the Taliban. The strategy brought CIA director David Petraeus to hold exploratory talks with Ghairat Baheer, the son-in-law of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar despite Hekmatyar’s past support for the Taliban and al Qaeda attacks.

But the White House’s efforts to explore a negotiated settlement to the 10-year war in Afghanistan haven’t been welcomed by the administration’s hawkish critics. J.D. Gordon, a Fox News contributor and former Herman Cain foreign policy adviser said to Fox News’ Jonathan Hunt last Friday that negotiating with the Taliban was akin to doing business with Nazis:

JONATHAN HUNT: The Taliban are still trying to kill us on pretty much a daily if not hourly basis and now we’re going to talk to the Taliban. Where’s the logic in that?

J.D. Gordon: I don’t really think there’s a lot of logic other than the administration’s desire to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible, which I could understand. [...] But I think negotiating with the Taliban is a mistake because, number one, they’re terrorists. And number two, they’re a lot like the Nazis. Instead of being supremacists for race though, they’re supremacists for their tribe and supremacists for their religion.

Watch it:

Gordon, whose foreign policy background includes serving as a public affairs officer at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and working at various right-wing pressure groups, continued his simplistic explanation of Afghanistan’s tribal politics with the observation, “If you look at Afghanistan you see it’s so much of a different country than the West.”

Gordon’s less than insightful analysis might offer some explanation for Herman Cain’s inability to lay out a cohesive foreign policy vision.

But while Gordon and Fox News choose to portray the U.S.’s involvement in Afghanistan as analogous to the European theater of World War II, Stephen Hadley of the U.S. Institute of Peace and John Podesta, chair of the Center for American Progress, argued in a ForeignPolicy.com column last week that the war in Afghanistan “will not end by military means alone.” Hadley, a George W. Bush administration adviser, and Podesta, chief of staff in the Clinton White House, concluded that “Efforts to reach a settlement should include an approach to Taliban elements that are ready to give up the fight and become part of the political process.”

The authors pushed back at critics, such as Gordon, writing, “Such an approach would not — as some have suggested — constitute ‘surrender’ to America’s enemies. Rather, convincing combatants to leave the insurgency and enter into the political process is the hallmark of a successful counterinsurgency effort.”

The Israel-based media watchdog Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported last week that at a recent event celebrating the founding of Fatah — the political party ruling the Palestinian Authority — a top religious leader, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein, recited an incendiary passage from Muslim scripture that calls for the killing of Jews:

“The hour of judgment will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

PMW has video of the event:

That wasn’t the only disturbing and offensive language used at the event. A man introducing the mufti referred to Jews as “apes and pigs”: “Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs is a war of religion and faith. Long live Fatah!”

The Israeli government condemned Hussein’s sermon. “This is a very serious offence that all the countries of the world must condemn,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hussein told Reuters: “There is nothing in my speech that calls for killing,” adding, “I was speaking about my people, its steadfastness and its existence in this land until the hour (of resurrection).”

Netanyahu has asked for an investigation. However, the AP notes that “it is unclear what authority Israel would have since Hussein is appointed to his position by the Palestinian president. There was no immediate comment from Abbas’ office.”

CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Former Oklahoma congressman and Newt Gingrich-endorser J.C. Watts conceded late last week that despite his state’s push to ban Sharia law, it has never actually existed in the Sooner State.

Gingrich has a long history of Islamophobic statements, from calling supporters of a mosque in New York City “hostile to our civilization” to saying that he would only support Muslim presidential candidates if “they would commit in public to give up Sharia.” This last statement earned approval from notable anti-Muslim pseudoexpert Frank Gaffney, who declared on his radio show that “Newt Gingrich has, in my judgment, rendered a real public service.” (You can read more about Gaffney and other Islamophobes behind the Sharia hysteria in the Center for American Progress’ recent report: Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.)

Yet for all the furor over the “creep of Sharia law” into the American legal system, it’s incredibly difficult to find people who have actually encountered it.

This was plainly evident when speaking with Watts late last week, whose home state of Oklahoma passed a Sharia law ban in 2010. (It has since been ruled unconstitutional by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.) ThinkProgress spoke with Watts, who served as a congressman from Oklahoma for four terms, about the ban as he campaigned for Newt Gingrich in South Carolina on Thursday. When we asked if Watts had ever encountered Sharia law in Oklahoma, the former congressman drew a blank:

KEYES: Personally, have you ever encountered Sharia law in Oklahoma?

WATTS: Well, we’ve not encountered Sharia law because Sharia law has never factored into our law.

Watch it:

Of course, Watts is correct that Sharia law has “never factored into” Oklahoma’s legal system. Even those charged with defending Oklahoma’s Sharia law ban in court were unable to cite a single example of it being used by a state court, “let alone that such applications or uses had resulted in concrete problems in Oklahoma.”

States like Virginia and Pennsylvania are currently considering taking up versions of sharia-banning legislation. To learn more about what Sharia law actually is and isn’t, read this short report from the Center for American Progress.