Chuck Hagel takes top US defense job as budget cuts loom

The Republican, who still faces skepticism and anger from some former Senate colleagues of his own party, was sworn in after a deeply divided chamber voted Tuesday to confirm him.

The twice-wounded Vietnam combat veteran now faces US$46 billion in automatic, across-the-board budget cuts that will hit the Pentagon on Friday unless a deal can be made by the Obama administration and Congress to avoid them. But no talks on an agreement appeared to be under way.

Among Hagel's other challenges are deciding on troop levels in Afghanistan as the U.S. military emerges from two wars and fighting worldwide terrorism with smaller, deficit-driven budgets.

He also will have to work with lawmakers who spent weeks attacking him in one of the bitterest fights over a Cabinet choice in more than two decades. Fellow Republicans were angry that he had strayed from the party line on several issues.

The top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe, said Hagel's record on Israel, Iran, defense spending and nuclear weapons “demonstrate, in my view, a profound and troubling lack of judgment on many of the critical issues he will now be confronted with as secretary of defense.”

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