The lead-up to today’s nomination of former GOP senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense has been marked by an aggressive smear campaign by neoconservatives determined to scuttle the bid. Among the ringleaders of this campaign has been the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, who has deemed Hagel unfit for service at the Pentagon.

It turns out though that Kristol was less worried about Hagel’s positions when he was being considered for a much higher position than Cabinet Secretary: Vice President of the United States. Hagel was among those on the short-list to be named as Vice Presidential candidate under then-Gov. George W. Bush on the Republican ticket in 2000. At the time, Kristol was a supporter of the possibility that Hagel would be a heart-beat away from the presidency, making the rounds on several cable shows to make the case.

When reading the transcript of Kristol’s appearance on Chris Matthews’ Hardball on Jun. 7, 2000, the irony is palpable. During the lead-in to the show, Matthews said, “Then we’re going to talk about what’s alleged to be a smear campaign against George W. Bush’s likely candidate for VP, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. That smear campaign, according to Bill Kristol, who’s going to join us, is being led by Senate Republican leader Trent Lott.” Kristol went on to accuse Lott of attempting to kill the chance of Hagel getting the nod, while forgoing the chance to bring up any negatives on Hagel when directly asked by Matthews. But Kristol made his feelings about then-Senator Hagel quite clear:

KRISTOL: Trent Lott does not like people [like Hagel] exercising independence.

MATTHEWS: Because they’re the very kind of people that you, Bill Kristol, like, right? You’re always championing the mavericks.

KRISTOL: Well, somewhat, yes.

The next week on Fox News, Kristol was more effusive in his praising of Hagel’s qualifications when talking with host Paula Zahn:

ZAHN: I want to have a broader conversation about that later, but I’m going to quickly continue to go down this list. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska?

KRISTOL: Impressive and attractive first-term senator, some foreign policy experience, a McCain supporter. So he reaches out to the McCain voters. I think he’s a pretty — has a pretty decent shot.

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Neoconservatives don’t want former Republican senator Chuck Hagel to become the next Secretary of Defense. They charge that Hagel isn’t sufficiently militaristic when it comes to Iran and its nuclear program and that the former GOP senator apparently hasn’t properly toed the right-wing line on Israel, which led one unnamed Senate Republican staffer to call Hagel an anti-Semite (the Daily Beast’s Ali Gharib on Friday noted the absurdity of this latter charge).

The anti-Hagel campaign gained steam last week after Bloomberg News reported that “Hagel has emerged as the leading candidate to become President Barack Obama’s next secretary of defense.” Neocon leader and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol — a key figure in getting the United States into war with Iraq — joined in on Friday, first simply publishing anti-Hagel talking points Republicans have been circulating on Capitol Hill and then with a follow up piece of his own in which he criticizes Hagel for being cautious about the United States going to war with Iran:

Anti-Israel propagandists are thrilled. Stephen Walt, junior partner of the better-known Israel-hater John Mearsheimer, writes that if President Obama nominates Hagel, it will be “a smart move.” … Furthermore, Walt writes approvingly, Hagel is “generally thought to be skeptical about the use of military force against Iran.”

Hagel certainly does have anti-Israel, pro-appeasement-of-Iran bona fides. While still a senator, Hagel said that “a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option.”

Got that? Hagel is an Iran appeaser because he thinks that war with Iran might not be the best way to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons. We’ve all seen this movie many times before: Disagree with the neocons on Israel and/or Iran policy? Well then you’re an anti-Semite and an Iran apologist (both smears the Weekly Standard launched at Hagel last week).

So just what has Hagel said about Iran? He’s called for direct talks with the Islamic Republic, warned of the consequences of war and urged “caution, patience, and a focus on multilateral diplomacy.” Here’s his assessment from an event two years ago at the Atlantic Council:

I think talking about going to war with Iran in fairly specific terms should be carefully reviewed. And that’s pretty dangerous talk. It’s easy to get a nation into war; not so easy to get a nation out of war, as we are finding out. I’m not sure that the American people are ready to go into a third war. [...]

We are the mightiest military force on Earth. The world has never seen such military power. But that military power must always be tempered with a purpose. And the military option is always on the table – of course it is – for any sovereign nation. But at the same time we recognize that, that option is there.

That all sounds just like what President Obama and other administration officials have been pushing. “I’m not sure if a Hagel appointment would actually constitute a ‘shift’” in the Obama administration’s Iran policy, Foreign Policy’s Joshua Keating noted last week.

Hagel’s Iran positions also sound a whole lot like those of former Israeli security and intelligence officials, who have been cautious about a military approach on Iran’s nuclear program. Former Israeli intelligence chief Meir Degan said attacking Iran would only delay its nuclear program and “could accelerate the procurement of the bomb,” a point that former Israeli internal security chief Yuval Diskin and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence head Shlomo Gazit agree with.

Just like Hagel and Obama administration officials, former top Israeli officials have promoted diplomacy with Iran as well. “Israel can contribute to the efforts to solve the Iranian issue [via diplomacy] by reaching an understanding with the United States on the time frame for direct negotiations between Washington and Tehran,” said two former high ranking Israeli officials last month. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said earlier this year that “there is enough time to try different avenues of pressure to change the balance of power with Iran without the need for a direct military confrontation with Iran.”

Using Kristol’s own standards, are these former top Israeli officials then “anti-Israel propagandists”?

Weekly Standard editor and top neocon Bill Kristol hasn’t been afraid to criticize party nominee Mitt Romney in the past, but today he’s on his side. Kristol not only approved of Romney’s statement claiming President Obama “sympathized” with the rioters who attacked U.S. diplomats in Egypt and Libya, but also claimed “the events of September 11, 2012″ (carefully not stating the 9/11 anniversary outright) was an ideal time to go after Obama’s purported “weakness” on foreign policy. Kristol, writing on the Standard’s blog, said:

One can question the timing and tone of Mitt Romney’s statement last night. One can note he wasn’t as fluent and clear as he might have been at his press conference this morning. Still, the fact remains that the events of September 11, 2012, represent a big moment for the country. Romney is right to sense this, and to seize on this moment as an occasion to explain the difference between his foreign policy and President Obama’s. He’s right to reject the counsel of the mainstream media, which is to keep quiet and give President Obama a pass.

Kristol went on to say that “Romney is right to bring home the weakness of the Obama administration, exemplified in the disgraceful statement issued yesterday, September 11, by the American embassy in Cairo.”

It’s unclear why Kristol had to repeatedly write “September 11,” when referring to what happened yesterday in Egypt and Libya, but his criticism was echoed by prominent Republican columnist Byron York, who wrote that “Romney was, and is, right. As events in Benghazi and Cairo unfolded, the Obama administration’s first instinct was to apologize for any offense Muslims might have taken.”

The release Kristol and York are referring to came from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo while it was under threat but before violence started; the official Obama Administration statement after the assaults quoted the President saying “we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.” While Romney accused Obama of “sympathiz[ing] with those who waged the attacks” as a consequence of the embassy’s criticism of the anti-Islam film that may have played a role in instigating the violence, Romney himself condemned an anti-Islam provocation in 2010, saying “Burning the Quran is wrong on every level. It puts troops in danger, and it violates a founding principle of our republic.”

Weekly Standard editor and influential right-wing foreign policy voice Bill Kristol criticized Mitt Romney for ignoring the war in Afghanistan and the military in his speech to the Republican National Convention last night. In a short, scathing piece Kristol put up on the Standard’s website shortly after the speech, the neocon don scolded Romney for not uttering “a word of appreciation” to American troops fighting in Afghanistan:

The United States has some 68,000 troops fighting in Afghanistan. Over two thousand Americans have died in the more than ten years of that war, a war Mitt Romney has supported. Yet in his speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander in chief, Mitt Romney said not a word about the war in Afghanistan. Nor did he utter a word of appreciation to the troops fighting there, or to those who have fought there. Nor for that matter were there thanks for those who fought in Iraq, another conflict that went unmentioned.

Leave aside the question of the political wisdom of Romney’s silence, and the opportunities it opens up for President Obama next week. What about the civic propriety of a presidential nominee failing even to mention, in his acceptance speech, a war we’re fighting and our young men and women who are fighting it? Has it ever happened that we’ve been at war and a presidential nominee has ignored, in this kind of major and formal speech, the war and our warriors?

Perhaps Romney didn’t mention Afghanistan because he has no plan. Back in July, the then-presumptive GOP presidential nominee had a chance talk about his Afghanistan policy in a major foreign policy speech but Romney offered no specifics, saying his goal would be to withdraw U.S. troops by 2014 — which is exactly what President Obama is going to do. In fact, Romney’s own advisers don’t know what Romney’s Afghanistan policy is.

And maybe Romney ignored the military and veterans in his speech last night because he has no plan to address those issues either. “We haven’t … heard any specific plans yet from Governor Romney or his campaign,” a VFW official said recently.