Obama’s mess in Syria, Iraq forced Hagel to resign: Madsen

An investigative journalist says former US defense secretary Chuck Hagel resigned because he did not understand President Barack Obama’s policy against the ISIL terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.

“Hagel resigned because he did not understand what the policy was in Syria,” Wayne Madsen told Press TV on Monday.

“It was really this Syria mess and now the mess with ISIL in Iraq that forced Hagel to resign,” he added.

He was commenting on a recent article by former US presidential candidate Ron Paul, titled “Who wants to be Defense Secretary?”

Paul wrote, “It seems nobody wants to be Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration. The president’s first two Defense Secretaries, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, both complained bitterly this month about their time in the administration.”

Madsen also pointed to President Obama’s paradoxical policy in Syria.

US National Security Advisor Susan Rice and US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power want to attack Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and at the same time they want to fight against ISIL, and “Hagel said we need to have some clarification or prioritization of what our policy is in Syria and that was not received,” he said.

Madsen named four influential White House officials who are behind the Obama administration’s foreign policy security decisions.

“There are incompetent people running national security and defense policy out of the White House and it’s primarily Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, Rice’s deputy Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor, and Valerie Jarrett, who is basically President Obama’s policy advisor. Those four individuals have caused this problem,” he said.