Chuck Hagel received two new high profile endorsements on Sunday for his bid to be the next Secretary of Defense. Retired Air Force General Michael Hayden and retired Army General Stanley McChrystal said on CNN’s State of the Union that Hagel is a good choice to take over for outgoing Pentagon chief Leon Panetta.

Hayden, former National Security Agency head during the Bush administration and CIA Director in both the Bush and Obama administrations, said Hagel is someone “you could talk to” and “have an honest dialogue” with. When host Candy Crowley asked the former generals if they see “any red flags” that would disqualify Hagel, McChrystal, most recently the top allied commander in Afghanistan, said “no” while Hayden said, “not at all.”

CROWLEY: From what you know of Chuck Hagel…what sort of reception would he get from the military.

HAYDEN: I think he will be fine. I know Senator Hagel. He was on my oversight committee when I was in the intelligence community. He was a member, and this is not a universal condition, he was a member that you could talk to, have an honest dialogue, not necessarily disagree but on a personal basis, have a candid exchange of views. You could always speak with him and frankly given my time in uniform, that’s a tremendous attribute. So I actually think this will work out well.

Watch the clip:

The “neocon smear machine” and other well-financed right-wing groups are trying to derail Hagel’s Defense Secretary bid but the former Republican senator from Nebraska has received widespread, bipartisan support from former top foreign affairs and defense officials in recent weeks and key senators have said they would vote to confirm Hagel.

Former Bush administration National Security Agency head and CIA director Michael Hayden told the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz that Israel may not have the military capacity to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities and reiterated his belief that any attack would only delay the Iranian program and perhaps push it toward obtaining nuclear weapons:

“I do not underestimate the Israeli talent, but geometry and physics tell us that Iran’s nuclear program would pose a difficult challenge to any military, as it is not a raid, and Israel’s resources are more limited than those of the U.S.,” Hayden told Haaretz.

“There is no absolute certainty that all targets are known,” he added. “They will have to be revisited – which only the U.S. Air Force would be able to do – and the operation will only set the Iranians back some time and actually push them to do that which it is supposed to prevent, getting nuclear weapons.”

Hayden also said there is “still some time” before a decision needs to be made about whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, adding that “real decisions are to be made in 2013 or 2014.”

Hayden’s view is widely shared among current and former U.S. and Israel officials. “At best this would buy you a few years,” an anonymous Obama administration official told the New York Times recently.

But at the same time, the Israelis, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, are openly debating an attack on Iran. Netanyahu recently criticized the international community for not being tougher on the Islamic Republic. “The international community is not drawing a clear red line for Iran,” he said. “Iran doesn’t see determination from the international community to stop its nuclear program.”

Haaretz also reported last week that according to a top Israeli official, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Netanyahu recently to give a “clear message as to her opposition” to an military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Obama administration is aware, not only of the threat an Iranian nuclear weapon poses, but also the potential negative consequences of a military attack on Iran. And that, coupled with U.N., U.S. and Israeli assessments that Iran has not yet decided on whether to build a nuclear weapon, leads the administration to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran, a track the it deems the “best and most permanent way” to solve the nuclear crisis.

Today during a Oval Office press briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama said the two leaders “prefer” to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis “diplomatically.” But the two men have not always seens eye-to-eye on how to confront Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Netanyahu has openly rejected efforts to diplomatically deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon while Obama, speaking at the AIPAC conference on Sunday, warned that “loose talk of war” is benefiting the Iranian government.

But a full page Washington Post ad taken out by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) — and signed by eight retired, high ranking, military and intelligence officials — urges Obama to continue exploring diplomatic paths and resist the push for war with Iran. The ad reads:

Unless we or an ally is attacked, war should be the option of last resort. Our brave servicemen and women expect you to exhaust all diplomatic and peaceful options before you send them into harm’s way.

Preventing a nuclear armed Iran is rightfully your priority and red line. Fortunately, diplomacy had not been exhausted and peaceful solutions are still possible.

While Obama reiterated in his speech to AIPAC yesterday that he “will take no options off the table” in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, GOP presidential candidates Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have blasted Obama as insufficiently hawkish on Iran.

In their testimony before Congress, American intelligence and military leadership consistently make the case that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon and diplomacy and sanctions can still work to deter Iran from restarting its nuclear weapons program. The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program but has not concluded that Tehran has restarted its nuclear weapons program.

Signatories of the NIAC letter — which include five retired Generals — urge Obama to “resist the pressure for a war of choice with Iran.”

Indeed, George W. Bush’s CIA director issued an even more stark warning. In January, former CIA director and NSA chief Gen. Michael Hayden told Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin that the Bush administration had carefully examined the possibility of bombing Iran and concluded that “[attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton is one of the more outspoken Fox News pundits, nearly always advocating for U.S. and/or Israeli military action to stop Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. But appearing on Fox News today, Bolton, who still supports military action, admitted that military strikes might be incapable of breaking Iran’s control of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Indeed, the comments from Bolton fall in line with Bolton’s former colleague in the George W. Bush Administration, former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden, who warned recently that bombing Iran may give Tehran an inducement to pursue a nuclear weapon. Bolton told Fox News this afternoon:

BOLTON: They [Israel] may attack now but not really break Iran’s control over the nuclear fuel cycle which is a very unfortunate circumstance. We’re running out of time. Israel’s running out of time. Nobody can calibrate exactly when Iran will get the bomb.

Watch it:

While Bolton and his fellow hawks are quick to refer to Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions as a foregone conclusion, neither senior U.S. intelligence officials now the IAEA have concluded that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. The IAEA has expressed concerns over a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program and Director of National Intelligence Jame Clapper emphasized that U.S. intelligence sources believe Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not yet made a decision whether to pursue a nuclear weapon.

Last month, Clapper told Members of Congress that economic pressure from sanctions could effect Iran’s “cost-benefit analysis” and dissuade Tehran from taking the steps necessary for constructing a nuclear weapon.

The GOP primary races — and the candidates’ efforts to one-up each others’ hawkishness on Iran — often dominates the foreign policy headlines, but a growing number of U.S. and Israeli officials are expressing reservations over the possibility of a military confrontation with Iran. The latest official to add their voice is George W. Bush’s CIA director and NSA chief Gen. Michael Hayden.

Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin reports that Hayden, while speaking yesterday at the Center for the National Interest, told a small group:

When we talked about this in the government, 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 and that would build it in secret.

Hayden, reports Rogin, told the audience that the Bush administration concluded that without a military occupation of Iran, a military campaign would be counterproductive.

Hayden’s misgivings about a airstrikes come the same week that Colin Kahl, Obama’s recently retired Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, expressed his own reservations about attacking Iran. He wrote in Foreign Affairs:

[G]iven the high costs and inherent uncertainties of a strike, the United States should not rush to use force until all other options have been exhausted and the Iranian threat is not just growing but imminent. Until then, force is, and should remain, a last resort, not a first choice.

And on Tuesday, Former CIA acting director John McLaughlin told an audience that attacking Iran “would be a very bad option.”

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said this week that what the IAEA knows about Iran’s nuclear program “suggests the development of nuclear weapons” and vowed to “alert the world” about program’s military dimensions. And the Chinese came out forcefully against Iran, warning that it does not tolerate a course toward nuclear weapons. “China adamantly opposes Iran developing and possessing nuclear weapons,” Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said.

Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the United States offered new negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program. “We are waiting for the Iranian reaction,” said a spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

At the same time, a growing number of retired U.S. defense and intelligence officials, combined with twelve of the 18 living former heads of the three Israeli security branches, are expressing reservations about the rush towards military action against Iran.

Congress and GOP presidential candidates might find short-term political benefits in hawkish rhetoric and turning the discussion “into a political debate and one -upmanship,” as Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) warned on Wednesday, but officials in both Washington and Tel Aviv are expressing strongly worded concerns about the potential dangers of a military strike.

Shortly after President Obama announced that U.S. military forces killed Osama bin Laden, former CIA Director Michael Hayden tried to downplay Obama’s achievement, saying that “any American president” would’ve made the same choice. However, the evidence doesn’t necessarily support this theory and even Defense Secretary Robert Gates — who has worked for numerous American presidents since LBJ — called Obama’s decision to get bin Landen “one of the most courageous calls I’ve ever seen a president make.”

Hayden is back at it today in the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed pages, this time weighing in on whether torturing terror detainees is responsible for getting info on bin Laden’s whereabouts. Of course he thinks this is the case, but this time he went a step further in the hyperbole, claiming than those who deny that torture “yielded useful intelligence” are no different than those who think 9/11 was in inside job or that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.:

For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 “truthers” who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot. And then we have the “birthers” who, even in the face of clear contrary evidence, take as an article of faith that President Obama was not born in the United States and hence is not eligible to hold his current office.

Let me add a third denomination to this faith-based constellation: interrogation deniers, i.e., individuals who hold that the enhanced interrogation techniques used against CIA detainees have never yielded useful intelligence.

This is a strawman. No one is saying that torture won’t at least lead to some information. Indeed, Glenn Carle — a former CIA Directorate of Operations who for a time led the interrogation of a high value detainee — said “it is possible that a specific piece of information from time to time would come from” using these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. But, “Does it justify using them?” he asked, “A categorical flat no.”

But while torture and EITs may yield something useful, they’re more trouble than they’re worth as Matthew Alexander, the interrogator responsible for getting information that led to al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, noted recently:

What torture has proven is exactly what experienced interrogators have said all along: First, when tortured, detainees will give only the minimum amount of information necessary to stop the pain. No interrogator should ever be hoping to extract the least amount of information. Second, under coercion, detainees give misleading information that wastes time and resources.

Carle agrees with this sentiment. “Almost all the information obtained from EITs was recalled…because it was viewed as unreliable,” he said in an interview with ThinkProgress last month.

But halfway through his op-ed, Hayden shifts his argument from *torture gets information* to *torture led to bin Laden.* What’s his proof? That detainees who were waterboarded in CIA custody gave up false information.

Putting that odd reasoning aside, there is no evidence to support the claim that torture or EITs were responsible for getting bin Laden. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey tried to go down this road too but his arguments were thoroughly debunked. “The people who say ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ directly led to catching Bin Laden are wrong,” said one unnamed former high-level CIA official recently.

And finally, there’s that whole issue of moral superiority. While “it’s impossible to know what information the detainee would have disclosed under non-coercive interrogations,” as Alexander noted, he asked, “Why are we having a discussion about efficacy?” “Torture is wrong,” he said, adding that “it’s a moral issue…and it’s a legal issue.”

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly noted, the right-wing has used the failed terrorist attack by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to renew calls for greater ethnic profiling of Muslims. “There should be a separate line to scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed,” said conservative talk radio host Mike Gallagher on Fox News last week.

But when David Gregory asked former Bush CIA director Michael Hayden on Meet The Press today if we are “effectively ethnically profiling” potential terrorism suspects, Hayden pushed back against the idea of ethnic profiling as a solution:

HAYDEN: I’m not quite sure the context in which you’re asking the question David about ethnically profiling, but with regard to intelligence…

GREGORY: Isn’t there a profile of who we think the terrorists are?

HAYDEN: Of course there is, but it’s based more on behavior. I mean, for example, the individual in question here, Abdulmutallab, I mean he would not have automatically fit a profile if you were standing next to him in the visa line at Dulles, for example. So it’s the behavior that we’re attempting to profile. And it’s the behavior, these little bits and pieces of information that were in the databases that we didn’t quite stitch together at this point in time. But it wasn’t a question of ethnicity or religion. Those are contributing factors, but it’s what people do that we should be paying attention to.

Unsatisfied, Gregory pressed his point to former Bush Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, saying that counterterrorism officials have told him that religion and ethnicity are more than “contributing factors” because “90 percent” of “these terrorists” are “Islamic males between the ages of 20 and 30.”

But Chertoff pushed back, arguing that “relying on preconceptions or stereotypes is actually kind of misleading and arguably dangerous.” Chertoff noted that al Qaeda has intentionally recruited people “who don’t fit the stereotype.” Watch it:

Earlier this week, Chertoff told NPR that Abdulmutallab’s case “illustrates the danger and the foolishness of profiling because people’s conception of what a potential terrorist looks like often doesn’t match reality.” “I think it’s not only problematic from civil rights’ standpoint, but frankly,” Chertoff said, “I think it winds up not being terribly effective.”