Afghan President Hamid Karzai, never one to mince words, on Sunday told the press that the United States and Taliban were each colluding to keep foreign troops in Afghanistan, albeit for different reasons.

Several explosions ripped through Afghanistan over the weekend during U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s visit, killing 19 civilians and highlighting security concerns that continue apace ahead of a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014.

According to Karzai, the attacks by the Taliban were meant to show that international forces will still be required after the 2014 deadline passes. Karzai chose a curious time to air his theory, putting it forward while delivering a speech on Afghan women:

“The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014. They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents” he said.

Defense Department officials quickly cancelled a planned joint press conference after Karzai’s statements, denying the cancellation had anything to do with Karzai’s statements. The head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) — the coalition headed by the U.S. in Afghanistan — strongly denounced the idea that the U.S. would work with the Taliban to keep U.S. forces in the country. “We have fought too hard over the past 12 years. We have shed too much blood over the past 12 years. We have done too much to help the Afghan Security Forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage,” said Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford.

Karzai has a lengthy history of inflammatory statements, usually intended to provide himself some form of leverage when dealing with his Western counter-parts or bolster himself domestically. In 2010, Karzai threatened to join Taliban after coming under pressure to launch reforms in the Afghan government. Karzai also warned against the continuation of NATO airstrikes in 2011, saying that NATO risked becoming an occupying force, adding that “history shows what Afghans do with trespassers and with occupiers.”

Tensions between the U.S. and Afghans stretch beyond difficulties in relations with Karzai. Reports on Monday say an Afghan police officer opened fire killing two U.S. troops and three of his fellow officers. These “green on blue” attacks — in which Afghan allies turn on their Western counterparts — have proved to be an ongoing impediment to lasting trust between U.S. and Afghan forces. Gen. John Allen, then the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told 60 Minutes that coalition troops were willing to sacrifice for the Afghan campaign, but unwilling to be murdered.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a speech before a gathering of Defense Department officials and military brass on Wednesday that the U.S. should remain engaged with its allies around the world and “reach out and find new alliances” based on common interests.

Hagel also told the group that he is “proud” to be leading the Pentagon, and that “it’s a great honor” and “a privilege” to join DOD. “You’re not joining my team,” Hagel said in the speech, “I am joining your team.”

“If there’s anything American has stood for more than any one thing, is that we are a force for good,” the newly minted Pentagon chief said later. “We’ve made mistakes. We’ll continue to make mistakes but we are a force for good.”

He also pledged to see that every Department of Defense employee is treated equally and without discrimination:

HAGEL: It’s also important for you to know that I am committed to … assuring that every person in the Department of Defense associated with the Department of Defense, civilian or military, is absolutely treated fairly, honestly, equal benefits, everything that each of you do should be dealt with on a fair and equal basis. No discrimination anywhere in any way.

The Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart writes today that the fight over Hagel’s nomination and confirmation was really about “the struggle over the Bush doctrine” and the fact that Hagel has challenged the notion that military force should be used to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Hagel seemed to touch on this theme during his speech today, arguing that the United States should use its power to remained engaged in the world. “How we apply our power is particularly important,” he said, adding, “That engagement in the world should be done wisely.” Watch the clip:

As the overlong saga that has been Chuck Hagel’s Secretary of Defense nomination comes to a close, it’s worth looking back on the number of ways in which conservatives predicted his impending downfall.

In addition to the many instances in which the right distorted Hagel’s record, the list of ways that these predictions turned out to be mistaken — and it is extensive — bridges conspiracy theories and cynical political calculations, attacks on character and long-standing grudges, both policy and personal. Now that the Senate has voted to break the Republican filibuster of Hagel’s nomination and he has been officially confirmed, here’s a list of some of the right wing’s more farcical predictions in its pursuit of trying to prevent Hagel from becoming the next Pentagon chief:

1. “Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite.”

Before Hagel’s nomination was even officially announced, the neoconservative smear machine was gearing up to make sure Hagel would pay for opposing the war in Iraq. In the first of many stories centered around a quote from an anonymous Senate aide, the Weekly Standard quoted one as saying, “Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite.”

However, the claim that Hagel is an anti-Semite effectively died soon after the Council on Foreign Relations’ Elliott Abrams lobbed it in an NPR interview, causing CFR’s President Richard Haass himself to smack the claim down. In the aftermath, only a few have dared to make the accusation directly against Hagel, instead resorting to misleading statements about his pro-Israel stance.

2. Democrats will turn on Chuck Hagel.

Politicos were speculating for weeks ahead of the announcement that the former Republican Senator would have a tough time gaining support among Democrats. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) topped several lists of those who would turn on Hagel, with non-committal comments of his blasted out by venues like The Weekly Standard.

Mainstream media got in on this idea as well, with NBC News’ Chuck Todd saying as many as ten Democrats might oppose Hagel and the National Journal writing up why Democrats don’t love him. In the end, though, it turned out that not only did Schumer announce his full support of Hagel, not a single Democrat voted against cloture for Hagel.

3. The LGBT community won’t accept Hagel.

In the days leading up to Hagel’s nomination, Republicans appeared to have found their long-lost concern for the equal rights of gays and lesbians. Hagel in 1998 said that James Hormel, then-President Bill Clinton’s nominee for Ambassador to Luxembourg, was “aggressively gay,” and thus unfit for the post. Right-wing concern trolling commenced, including Washington Post blogger Jen Rubin’s prediction that “along with the eggnog and mistletoe, Hagel will disappear after the holidays.” The attack reached its peak with the Log Cabin Republicans’ purchase of two full-page ads against Hagel.

That charge fizzled quickly, however. Hagel apologized publicly for his comments, which Hormel accepted graciously. Former staffers came out in support of Hagel, the Human Rights Campaign withdrew its complaints, and the opposition that Republicans hoped to elicit from the gay community never materialized.

4. GOP will walkout on Hagel vote.

With the Democrats unlikely to turn on Hagel, Republicans then opted to do everything they could to delay a vote on Hagel indefinitely. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) was forced to postpone moving Hagel out of committee by a hold from Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). News outlets soon reported — via more anonymous sources — that Republicans would walk out on the committee vote for Hagel. ThinkProgress learned differently, and Hagel moved out of committee with barely an incident.

5. Hagel will withdraw.

After Hagel’s confirmation hearing, Foreign Policy blogger Tom Ricks saw “50-50” odds that Hagel would withdraw. Hagel’s personal confidants said he would not withdraw his nomination and when asked about the matter, White House spokesman Jay Carney said “absolutely not.” Republicans took no chances, choosing to make history by filibustering a Defense Secretary-nominee for the first time, going against previous stances on up-or-down votes on nominees. Despite that filibuster’s obvious inability to hold, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and 14 of his colleagues still sent President Obama a letter to pull Hagel — despite still not having the votes to block confirmation.

6. Hagel’s secret speeches will sink his nomination.

Republicans and the right-wing media have been desperately hunting for nefarious speeches given by Hagel after his time in the Senate as a way to block his confirmation. One of those speeches, given before the liberal pro-Israel group J Street in 2009, was sure to be the silver bullet that ended Hagel’s nomination according to Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin. Rubin — who has written over 100 posts trying to derail Hagel — claimed that J Street was hiding the video out of fear for what it showed. J Street eventually released the video in question, which was received with a yawn by most of the world.

The right then hoped that Hagel’s long-sought after comments to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League would be the final nail in his coffin — the speech turned out to be a dud. A supposedly explosive comment made by Hagel, calling the State Department an “adjunct” of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, was likewise denied by a professor in attendance at the speech.

7. Hagel’s ties to the “Friends of Hamas” will end his bid.

Attempts by the likes of Sen. Cruz to insinuate that Hagel has received funding from shady sources likewise hasn’t been able to stand up to scrutiny. One such effort claimed that Hagel had the backing of a group called the “Friends of Hamas.” That claim — later revealed to have started as a joke — was spread across the right-wing before being debunked. The so-called “Friends of Hamas” doesn’t exist. In the end, Hagel survived a set of lengthy confirmation battles that in the words of Sen. Levin “far exceed” the scrutiny previous nominees have faced.

(Photo: Scripps Howard Foundation Wire)

The Senate on Tuesday voted to confirm Chuck Hagel to become the next Secretary of Defense, just hours after the upper chamber of Congress broke the Republican-led filibuster of Hagel’s nomination.

The final vote was 58-41. Four Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for Hagel: Sens. Mike Johanns (NE), Thad Cochran (MS), Richard Shelby (AL), and in a surprise move, Rand Paul (KY), who voted against cloture earlier today. Eighteen Republicans supported the cloture motion to bring about the up-or-down vote this afternoon.

Once sworn in, Hagel will most likely first face the looming budget crisis, particularly sequestration, which is set to kick in at the end of the week absent any deal. Hagel will also face other pressing issues like the coming drawdown in Afghanistan and the focus on Asia, none of which were debated much during the run-up to Hagel’s confirmation vote.

The Republicans and their neocon allies threw everything they could — however false, misleading, petty or shameless — at Hagel to try to prevent him from leading the Pentagon and TPM’s Josh Marshall may have stumbled across one of the main reasons why. “The real driver of this drama is that it signals a real closing of the door on the Bush era,” he wrote last week.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in the waning minutes of the fight to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense attempted to tie Hagel to Iran’s past denial of the Holocaust.

Speaking from the floor of the Senate, Inhofe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, began by noting that he’d just watched the 1993 film Schindler’s List for the first time three days ago. The Oscar-winning film depicts a story in the midst of the Holocaust, in which over six million Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others were systematically killed, an event that Iranian government officials have denied actually happened.

Inhofe expressed his amazement that any state could deny such an event, then brought the whole thing back around to surreptitiously question Chuck Hagel’s support for Israel:

INHOFE: But I think the mere fact that they would say — Iran would say that the Holocaust didn’t exist. Keep in mind, I know the response to this. They say, we don’t have any control over who supports this. Isn’t it interesting, though, that Iran supports Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense? I mean, they — arguably, they could be considered to be the most — the greatest foe that’s out there for the United States, recognizing the capability that they’re going to have and statements they have a made about the United States of America. That is a frightening thing.

Watch his comments here:

The Iranians responded to the Hagel nomination by taking a backhanded swipe at the United States for its policies. The neocons picked up the comment, claiming that Iran supports Hagel, but as one expert observed, “The Iranian regime is hardly cheering Hagel on.”

Inhofe in particular has been attacking Hagel for this for weeks, including during Hagel’s confirmation hearing. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) took to task Inhofe’s pushing the Iranian “endorsement” line during the last meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioning whether he and his colleagues would appreciate it if “the worst group you could imagine” endorsed them.

The Senate on Tuesday voted to break the Republican-led filibuster of Chuck Hagel’s nomination to become the next Secretary of Defense, clearing the way for his confirmation.

Senate Republicans made history earlier this month by successfully filibustering a president’s Defense Secretary nominee for the first time in U.S. history.

But a number of Republicans who voted to uphold the filibuster — including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) — joined Democrats in breaking the filibuster on Tuesday. Overall, 18 Republicans voted for cloture, which ultimately passed by a vote of 71-27.

The neocons, later joined by Senate Republicans, spent two-and-a-half months trying to prevent Hagel’s nomination and eventual confirmation, mostly by promoting false claims and smears that Hagel is an anti-Semite, anti-Israel and pro-Iran, all of which with either debunked or lacked credibility to stick. Hagel’s detractors then turned to a kitchen-sink strategy by distorting his record and making wild claims, for example that Hagel accepted money from America’s enemies and that the former Republican senator has ties to, as it turns out, non-existant terror groups.

According to Senate rules, a final up-or-down vote on Hagel’s nomination will take place no later than 30 hours from today’s cloture vote. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said today that he hopes the vote will take place later on this afternoon.

A journalist with the New York Daily News has come forward as the unintentional source for a rumor that Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel was receiving funding from the non-existent “Friends of Hamas” group.

Hagel has faced an uphill battle towards confirmation since his nomination in January, a battle aided by the unprecedented amount of falsehoods surrounding Hagel’s record and finances. One of those rumors, that Hagel was hiding funding from groups with anti-Israeli ties called the “Friends of Hamas.” Dan Friedman of the New York Daily News believes that he first coined the name, when asking a Republican Congressional aide about potentially controversial groups that Hagel had addressed previously addressed and from whom he had received speaking fees:

Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the “Junior League of Hezbollah, in France”? And: What about “Friends of Hamas”?

The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed — let alone that a former senator would speak to them. [...]

The aide promised to get back to me. I followed up with an e-mail, as a reminder: “Did he get $25K speaking fee from Friends of Hamas?” I asked.

Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a confidential question soon escaped into the right-wing ether. The name “Friends of Hamas” was picked up by members of the right-wing blogosphere — starting with Breitbart News on Feb. 7 — and expanded outward rapidly. Appearing on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show, National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy brought up the mythical group as an example of what might be lurking in Hagel’s history.

The name continued to circulate until Slate’s Dave Weigel published a piece firmly establishing that the group doesn’t exist last week. If the rumor-mongering was limited to conservative blogs, it wouldn’t be as worrisome. Unfortunately, prominent Republicans have been all too keen to go along with the line of questioning started by Breitbart.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was strongly rebuked by his Senate colleagues for his lobbing claims — completely void of evidence — that Hagel had received money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and North Korea that he was hiding from the Senate Armed Services Committee. While visiting Israel, former Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that if Hagel’s ties to “Friends of Hamas” proved true, it would “disqualify” Hagel from being Secretary of Defense. Likewise, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in a radio interview indicated that the “Friends of Hamas” was just part of a string of new information that was “more and more concerning.”

All of this has yet to prevent Hagel from having locked-up the majority vote necessary to be confirmed when the Senate returns next week — as soon as the Republicans drop the filibuster they started to prevent such an up-or-down vote from occurring.

The Senate GOP made history on Thursday, successfully filibustering a president’s choice for Defense Secretary. Senate Republicans — with the exception of a few — voted against a cloture motion yesterday afternoon, thus preventing an up-or-down vote to approve their former colleague Chuck Hagel and delaying his confirmation until after the President’s Day recess.

In a scathing editorial, the New York Times blasted the Republicans, saying “they hit a new low” in their four-year campaign of obstructing anything President Obama wants to get done:

The Republicans claimed they needed more information about Mr. Hagel, though he answered every question at his confirmation hearing and provided more paperwork than usual. As a former Republican senator, in fact, Mr. Hagel is better known to his old colleagues than most nominees. A delay of another week or two, which some members said they were seeking, is not going to change anyone’s opinion.

Other media figures piled on as well. “It looks terrible to people overseas,” TIME Magazine’s Mark Thompson said on PBS’s Newshour, adding, “you want a secretary of defense, especially when you’re at war and especially when you have these other issues hanging over your head. No good can come from this ambiguity that we’re currently facing.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, himself a former Republican congressman, was particularly upset with the Senate Republicans’ hold up of Hagel, expressing disbelief at Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) admission on Thursday that he’s opposing Hagel because Hagel broke with the GOP on the Iraq war: “They don’t have a Secretary of Defense running the Pentagon because of a 6 or 7 year old grudge? Really?”:

SCARBOROUGH: For the 66,000 troops currently serving in Afghanistan and for their families all across America this morning, I’m sure they’re glad to know that we don’t have a Secretary of Defense in place and we’re not going to because of 7-year-old political grudge. Forget about sequestration, forget about all the cuts, there are men and women on the ground in Afghanistan today fighting and possibly dying for this country and they don’t have a Secretary of Defense running the Pentagon because of a 6 or 7 year old grudge? Really? Is that how small we’ve become? And because this guy is disagreeable? …. It’s sort of frightening isn’t it?

“This filibuster, with the recess, permits the opposition to keep upping the ante,” said NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell in the same segment, adding, “Every time Chuck Hagel turns a corner, they’re throwing something else at him. Benghazi wasn’t even on his watch.” Watch the clip:

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“The impressive thing about the anti-Hagel effort is how politically tone-deaf it is,” writes the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison. It’s not just that their opposition is misguided, but they stand to gain nothing from it. No one outside of a small core of hard-liners sympathizes with what Senate Republicans are doing.”

“The Constitution says the Senate must give or withhold its consent to presidential nominees,” the Times notes, “it does not give minority blocs the power to determine the outcome.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told us how he really feels about Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel on Fox News this afternoon, saying “people don’t forget” when you cross your own party.

Speaking to Fox News host Neil Cavuto, McCain said that he still believed that Hagel would get the votes required to be confirmed. What followed was the clearest indication yet that he’s still bitter that Hagel turned against the Iraq War:

McCAIN: But to be honest with you, Neil, it goes back to there’s a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly and say he was the worst President since Herbert Hoover and said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which was nonsense. He was anti-his own party and people — people don’t forget that. You can disagree but if you’re disagreeable, then people don’t forget that.

Watch McCain’s statements here:

McCain had just voted “no” on the bid to end debate on Hagel’s nomination, supporting the Republican filibuster. Just days ago, McCain insisted that he would do no such thing, and is currently claiming that he’ll vote to break the filibuster following the Senate’s President’s Day recess ten days from now.

The two, formerly close friends, faced off during Hagel’s confirmation hearing over the success of the 2007 surge in Iraq, highlighting McCain’s lingering frustrations with the former Republican Senator from Nebraska. That frustration is shared among many of Hagel’s other opponents, including the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, forming the backbone of neoconservative opposition to his confirmation. McCain is right, however, that once the filibuster breaks Hagel is still set to be confirmed in an up-or-down vote.

Senate Republicans today chose to uphold a filibuster against Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, despite many of them previously pledging that they would be willing to allow him to be confirmed.

Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and John Cornyn (R-TX) all voted against cloture, despite their pleas during the Bush administration that a president’s Cabinet nominees should receive an up-or-down vote.

Four Republicans, Sens. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mike Johanns (R-NE), voted to break the filibuster. The final vote was 58-40, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) voting present, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) not voting at all, and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voting “no” as a procedural move so that he can bring another vote to the floor at a later date.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had originally scheduled the cloture vote for tomorrow morning, but surprised many by pushing it up to this afternoon. Earlier today, Reid took to the Senate floor to lambaste his Republican colleagues for delaying an up-or-down vote on Hagel, the first filibuster of a Secretary of Defense nominee.

Prior to the roll call’s beginning, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attempted to explain that the vote that was set to take place was the vote “to confirm Chuck Hagel,” rather than merely being a procedural vote. Inhofe also claimed that a 60-vote margin was common practice, rendering the actions of the Republicans not a filibuster. However, the motion was still filed by Reid as cloture — the ending of debate — rather than the actual confirmation of Hagel, as laid out be Levin before voting. This leaves the door open for Hagel’s nomination to remain on the Senate floor and renders the GOP’s actions a filibuster under the Senate’s rules.

While Senate Republicans are opposed to voting on Hagel today, they seem to believe that they’ll change their minds after the Senate returns from its President’s Day recess in 10 days. This morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that he expected to be willing to move Hagel forward at that time, “unless there’s some bombshell that he likes blood sucking vampires.” Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John McCain (R-AZ) said roughly the same thing today, leaving their votes against Hagel today confusing.

The hope for such a bombshell emerging seems far less than likely. A speech given by Hagel in 2008 that conservatives have long-sought as evidence that Hagel falls far outside of the mainstream was released today, turning out to be a dud. Likewise right-wing implications that Hagel was secretly being backed by a group called “Friends of Hamas” also proved to be utterly false, fabricated on a far-right media outlet.

After today’s filibuster, the Senate will reconsider Hagel after their break. While today’s vote showed that the GOP was willing to obstruct and delay, they ultimately will be unable to do this forever. In the end, Hagel still possesses more than the majority vote needed for final passage.