Republicans have lashed out against the Obama administration’s decision to bring a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden to New York City for trial, a high-profile move that would help the president follow through on one of his earliest campaign pledges.

One of the unmet promises from President Barack Obama’s first term involved closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and bringing suspects to the continental United States for trial.

Related: Bin Laden’s son-in-law pleads not guilty to terror charge in New York

Two days after his first inauguration, the president signed an executive order calling for the closure of the military prison. But bipartisan resistance from lawmakers, who feared trials for terror suspects on domestic soil, scuttled efforts to shutter Guantanamo, leaving prisoners and detainees in legal limbo.

Four years later, Guantanamo remains in operation, and military tribunals – 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial is ongoing – continue at the naval base in Cuba. But the Obama administration’s decision to arraign a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, in federal court on Friday in New York marked maybe its most high-profile example of working to shift terror prosecutions to civilian courts.

And already, Republicans are mounting stiff resistance to the move.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who on Thursday took to the Senate floor to defend Obama’s prerogatives in waging drone strikes, vowed to fight the administration’s decision to bring Abu Ghaith to New York.

"The American people and their representatives in Congress have been clear that they do not want foreign members of al Qaeda brought to the United States,” he said in a statement. “The Obama administration's decision to try Abu Ghaith in a New York district court clearly contravenes the will of the American people. This decision by the Obama administration will not go unchallenged."

The issue of Guantanamo is one on which Republicans have built a rare political advantage over Obama on an issue of foreign policy. Their dogged opposition to terror trials on U.S. soil has won over a handful of Democrats, thereby stymying the administration’s ability to execute one of the president’s first official orders.

And following Abu Ghaith’s “not guilty” plea this morning to charges of plotting to kill Americans, Republicans have piled on in short order.

“What has not changed since the issuance of the president's executive orders is that terrorists working to attack the United States are enemy combatants, and if captured should be placed in military custody where they can be interrogated,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement. “The decision of the president to import Sulaiman Abu Ghaith into the United States solely for civilian prosecution makes little sense, and reveals, yet again, a stubborn refusal to avoid holding additional terrorists at the secure facility at Guantanamo Bay despite the circumstances.”

Added Republican Rep. Peter King, the New York congressman who’s been vocally critical of terror trials in New York: "While a federal court trial of Abu Ghaith in lower Manhattan would not present the same security issues as a trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, I strongly believe as a matter of policy that military tribunals are the proper venue for enemy combatants. If the Abu Ghaith trial does go forward in federal court it must not be used as a precedent for future enemy combatants who should be tried at Guantanamo."

With Congress out of town, few Democrats have chimed in on the Abu Ghaith decision; he was only extradited on Thursday. Several Democrats, like Manhattan Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., have in the past been vocally supportive of civilian trials in New York.

"I support the government bringing this prosecution in civilian court and expect that the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York will successfully prosecute Abu Ghaith and put him away for the rest of his life," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate intelligence panel, said in a statement. She has previously supported trials for terror suspects in the United States. "The bottom line is the federal criminal court system works. Hundreds of international terrorists have been convicted in our federal courts since 9/11 and are locked away in heavily fortified federal prisons."

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 7, 2013, as he leaves a GOP policy meeting.

Deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest, though, used Friday’s briefing with reporters to push back against criticism of the move.

“The intelligence community agrees that the best way to protect our national security interests is to prosecute Abu Ghaith in an Article III court,” Earnest said, later adding: “This is somebody who's going to be held accountable for his crimes and will be done -- and that will be done in accordance with the laws and values of this country, and it will be done so in a pretty efficient way.”

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 8, 2013 4:11 PM EST

Highlighting the discord among Republicans over President Barack Obama’s targeted killings policy, two prominent GOP senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, took to the Senate floor to criticize Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 12-hour filibuster Wednesday. 

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., (L) and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. confer at the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington March 5, 2013.

Thirteen Republican senators – including Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and the junior GOP senators from McCain’s and Graham’s home states -- joined Paul during his filibuster to show their support for his demand that President Barack Obama explicitly say whether he thinks he has the authority to order the killing of a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil who was a noncombatant and posed no imminent threat of an attack.

Paul has delayed the confirmation of Obama’s CIA nominee John Brennan in order to dramatize his demand for an answer from Obama.

On Thursday Paul received a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder saying that the president does not have the authority "to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil."

McCain said Thursday the Senate needed to conduct hearings and an in-depth debate on Obama’s targeted killings policy, “but that conversation should not be talking about drones killing Jane Fonda and people in cafes. It should be all about what authority and what checks and balances should exist” in order to combat “an enemy that we know will be with us for a long time.”

In his filibuster Paul had approvingly quoted an article by National Review writer Kevin Williamson which said, “As satisfying as putting Jane Fonda on a kill list might have been, I don’t think our understanding of the law would have approved such a thing even though she did give communist aid to the aggressor in Vietnam (in the 1970s).”

While Paul was conducting his filibuster, McCain and Graham were among a group of Republican senators having dinner with Obama at a Washington, D.C. hotel.

Graham scoffed at Paul’s question about whether Obama thinks he has the authority to kill a noncombatant American citizen on U.S. soil.

“I find the question offensive,” Graham said Thursday on the Senate floor. “As much I disagree with President Obama and as much as I support past presidents, I do not believe that question deserves an answer.” Paul’s question, the South Carolina Republican said, “cheapens the debate.”

Graham said flatly that Obama would not use a drone against a noncombatant sitting in a café somewhere in the United States.

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But there was less of a policy split that might have appeared on the surface: Paul repeatedly said during his filibuster that the government can and should use lethal force in cases when an attack is imminent.

He cited the scenario of a terrorist who was about to attack the U.S. Capitol with a bazooka or rocket launcher, as well as similar scenarios.

But Paul said the Obama administration has not yet made clear “what rules are going to be used in America. If you’re going to kill noncombatants, people eating dinner in America, there have to be some rules. Does the Constitution apply?”

When Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday he repeatedly said the use of a drone to kill an American citizen on U.S. soil who wasn’t an imminent threat wouldn’t be an “appropriate” use of lethal force.

After repeated questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz, R- Texas, Holder finally said it would also not be constitutional. Holder said, “I thought I was saying ‘no.’ All right, no.”

In his comments on the Senate floor Thursday, Graham reprised the points he made Wednesday during the Holder hearing.

But the Paul filibuster and the excitement it generated among libertarians and Republicans has given new visibility to the discord over the targeted killings strategy and whether Obama might seek to apply it to U.S. citizen who posed an imminent threat.

Graham said to Holder, “I want to stand by you and the president to make sure we don’t criminalize the war and that the commander-in-chief continues to have the authority to protect us all.” He said “a lot of my colleagues are well-meaning but there is only one commander-in-chief in our Constitution.”

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 7, 2013 12:54 PM EST

The Senate voted to confirm former Sen. Chuck Hagel as President Barack Obama's next secretary of defense following weeks of dogged opposition by Republican senators to their erstwhile colleague.

The Senate voted 58 to 41 to formally confirm Hagel, on the heels of a procedural vote earlier in the day that cleared the way for Tuesday afternoon's final vote.

That earlier vote dispensed with a filibuster that Senate Republicans had waged for a week and a half against Hagel, whose confirmation was delayed by Republicans past the President's Day recess in order to allow for more time to dig into the former Nebraska senator's background.

A number of Republican detractors — including Sens. John McCain, Ariz., Lindsey Graham, S.C. and Kelly Ayotte, N.H. — reversed their votes on Monday in order to allow the Hagel nomination to move forward.

The Senate voted 71 to 27 to move forward with Hagel's nomination, clearing the 60-vote threshold needed to end the GOP filibuster. A handful of the Republicans who allowed Hagel's nomination to come to a final vote ultimately voted against confirmation.

In the end, Obama was able to win confirmation for Hagel, his choice to succeed outgoing Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon. But not before Republicans were able to drag out the confirmation fight and, in the process, ding Hagel, their onetime GOP Senate colleague from the Cornhusker State.

Republicans had fought strenuously to defeat Hagel, accusing him at points of harboring hostilities toward Israel, and sympathies for the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Tied into Hagel's nomination as well have been Republicans' long-running effort to ding Obama and his administration over their handling of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Former Senator Chuck Hagel testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to be Defense Secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, in this January 31, 2013, file photo.

"What has their filibuster gained my Republican colleagues?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., asked on the Senate floor. "Twelve days later, Senator Hagel's exemplary record of service to his country remains untarnished."

Reid added: "Senate Republicans have delayed for the better part of two weeks for one reason and one reason only: partisanship."

Hagel didn't necessarily help his cause during a combative confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Republicans aggressively questioned Hagel on a variety of matters during the Jan. 31 hearing. 

Even still, Democrats held firm in their backing for the former Nebraska senator, helping to move his nomination forward. Republicans, though, managed to buy themselves more time — they said, to more fully investigate Hagel's background — by waging a filibuster against the nomination on Feb. 14. 

Democrats angrily protested the delay, especially as current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta planned to leave the job, as dangerous and unprecedented. Republican opponents of Hagel, though, said at that time that they would drop their objections to holding a confirmation vote after last week's recess.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 12:37 PM EST

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Former Senator Chuck Hagel.

Chuck Hagel’s seven-week struggle to win confirmation as secretary of defense appears near the end with an expected Senate vote Tuesday on his nomination.

President Barack Obama’s choice to run the Pentagon is expected to win confirmation since a few Republicans announced that they’ll join Senate Democrats in voting for him.

The vote would put an end to a rocky nomination process that came after Hagel’s GOP foes succeeded in delaying the confirmation.

Lead opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, insinuated two weeks ago that Hagel might have given as-yet undisclosed speeches to “extreme or radical groups” or received money from foreign sources or from defense contractors in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., rebuked the latter saying Hagel complied with the committee’s financial disclosure requirements and deserved confirmation.

Last week 15 GOP senators asked Obama to withdraw Hagel’s nomination, but it was clear that not enough Republican senators would vote to further delay Hagel’s confirmation by extended debate or filibuster.

The former Nebraska Republican senator turned against his party by campaigning for Democratic Senate candidate Bob Kerrey in Nebraska last year.

He’d also harshly criticized President George W. Bush after the Iraq war became unpopular in 2006, suggesting at one point that Bush might be impeached. These remarks made him popular with Democrats but something of a pariah in his own party.

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The antagonism of Cruz and several other Republican senators turned to disdain once Hagel testified before the Armed Services Committee last month. Hagel was forced to amend or retract comments he’d made about Iran, Israel and other matters.

At one point during his confirmation hearing, when discussing U.S. policy toward Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons, Hagel said, “I’ve just been handed a note that I misspoke and said I supported the president’s position on ‘containment.’ If I said that, I meant to say that obviously – his position on containment – we don’t have a position on containment.”

Levin intervened: “Just to make sure your correction is clear, we do have a position on containment – which is we do not favor containment.”

“It was the most unimpressive performance that I have seen in watching many nominees who came before the committee,” said Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Hagel opponent.

Related: What problems will Hagel inherit at Department of Defense?

But Democrats on the panel repeatedly praised Hagel for having served in combat in Vietnam.

From the beginning, Obama portrayed Hagel as a man who was ideally qualified to head the Defense Department because, as the president said when announcing the nomination, he “knows that war is not an abstraction. He understands that sending young Americans to fight and bleed in the dirt and mud, that’s something we only do when it’s absolutely necessary.”

In presenting Hagel as his pick, Obama declared that “Chuck represents the bipartisan tradition that we need more of in Washington.”

Obama said that he was courageous and independent in his views “and that’s exactly the spirit I want on my national security team, a recognition that when it comes to the defense of our country, we are not Democrats or Republicans; we are Americans.”

But Republicans such as Cruz said Hagel was not up to the job of running the Pentagon. Cruz went so far as to argue that Hagel, if confirmed, would “make military conflict in the next four years substantially more likely” because his views on negotiating with Tehran would encourage the Iranians to accelerate their nuclear weapons development program.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 4:10 AM EST

Even as one of their members, Richard Shelby of Alabama, now says he will vote in favor of not only cloture for Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary but for the Hagel nomination itself, 15 other Senate Republicans are calling for President Obama to withdraw his nomination.

"While we respect Senator Hagel's honorable military service, in the interest of national security, we respectfully request that you withdraw his nomination," the Republicans wrote to Obama and announced in a press release from Sen. John Cornyn's office. "It would be unprecedented for a Secretary of Defense to take office without the broad base of bipartisan support and confidence needed to serve effectively in this critical position. Senator Hagel's performance at his confirmation hearing was deeply concerning, leading to serious doubts about his basic competence to meet the substantial demands of the office. While Senator Hagel's erratic record and myriad conversions on key national security issues are troubling enough, his statements regarding Iran were disconcerting."

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Cornyn of Texas is up for reelection this cycle and has a Lone Star State freshman, Ted Cruz, rising as the new darling of the right. The signers of the letter include Cruz, James Inhofe (R-OK), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), David Vitter (R-LA), Mike Lee (R-UT), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Dan Coats (R-IN), Ron Johnson (R - WI), Jim Risch (R-ID), John Barrasso (R-WY), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Tim Scott (R-SC).

Notably not signing on, however, were Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), two-thirds of the Graham-McCain-Ayotte grouping.

Read the full letter here. 

Shelby becomes the third Republican to voice public support for Hagel, giving him 58 public yes votes. The other two Republicans to come out in support of Hagel are Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Mike Johanns of Nebraska, who filled Hagel's seat in the Senate. (Johanns announced Monday that he would be retiring when his term ends in 2014.)

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file photo

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

"Sen. Shelby intends to support the Hagel nomination barring any unforeseen disqualifications that come to light before the vote," Hagel spokesman Jonathan Graffeo told NBC. "That is not a change of heart. He has always been inclined to support Hagel, but he voted against cloture as a courtesy to members who said they needed more time to examine Hagel's record."

Several Republicans have indicated they would likely support at least cloture after the Senate gets back from its break next week.

With the Senate falling short Thursday of the 60 votes needed to move to a confirmation vote on defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, Majority Leader Harry Reid was correct in claiming that never before had the Senate had a cloture vote on a nominee to run the Defense Department.

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But it’s not unprecedented for the Senate to have cloture votes on other presidential nominations – from ambassadors to judges.

The Senate changed its rules in 1949 to allow cloture motions on nominations, but cloture wasn’t sought on a nomination until 1968. From that year until March of 2012 cloture was sought on 99 nominations, including some well-known nominees:

• Abe Fortas to be chief justice in 1968
• William Rehnquist to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1971 and to be chief justice in 1986
• John Bolton to be ambassador the United Nations in 2005
• Ben Bernanke to be chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2010
• Richard Cordray to be head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2012.

But not in every case of a cloture vote is there a prolonged debate on the nomination which ties up the Senate for days – in fact, in most cases there isn’t.

A cloture vote, if successful, allows a final up-or-down vote on confirming the nominee, after up to 30 more hours of debate. For confirmation, a simple majority is usually, but not always, all that is needed.

The decision to seek a cloture vote is in the majority leader’s hands and he can time cloture votes not merely to push forward a nomination and get a vacancy filled, but to paint the nominee’s opponents as obstructionists.

Reid and previous Senate leaders have used cloture votes to drive political messages and to generate enthusiasm among their party’s base.

Case in point: Miguel Estrada, President George W. Bush’s nominee to the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist insisted on seven separate votes on cloture on the Estrada nomination in 2003.

Each of them failed, but they hammered home that Reid and the Democrats were blocking a nominee whom Republicans thought was amply qualified and who happened to be a Latino immigrant.

“This is a dark moment, I believe, in the history of the United States Senate,” Frist said after the final vote on Estrada failed and the nominee withdrew.

Senators, Frist said “have been denied a very, very basic right” to vote on the nominee and “Miguel Estrada has been denied the opportunity to be considered by this body by a single up-or-down vote, whereby individual colleagues could vote either for or against a brilliant, a qualified nominee, all because of the obstruction of a few.”

More than a few: 43 Democrats, including Reid, voted against cloture on Estrada.

After Reid filed the cloture motion on Wednesday, Republicans denied that they really were stalling Hagel’s confirmation by a filibuster.

“What we are doing is not a filibuster,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, R- Okla., said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “We are seeking a 60 vote threshold for a controversial nomination. If the majority really wanted to move forward quickly, all they have to do is agree to a 60-vote margin, like they did with the (Kathleen) Sebelius and (John) Bryson nominations.”

When President Obama nominated Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services in 2009, Republicans and anti-abortion groups delayed her confirmation, partly due to her understating the amount of campaign contributions she had received from a Kansas abortion doctor, Dr. George Tiller, and partly due to her veto, as Kansas governor, of a bill to impose new limits on abortion providers.

In the negotiations over Sebelius, Reid and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to 60-vote threshold on confirmation – a procedure they could use in Hagel’s case as well.

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Inhofe contended that, “A 60-vote margin is not a filibuster. We are merely saying the Senate is entitled to this information” -- on speeches that Hagel had given in the past few years.

The term “filibuster” evokes images of actor Jimmy Stewart holding the Senate floor until he collapses from exhaustion in the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And there have been famous single-senator filibusters: Sen. Strom Thurmond holds the record of 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to a civil rights bill in 1957.

But by the time the Senate voted on cloture Thursday there had been only two days of intermittent floor debate on Hagel’s nomination – with discussion of the defense secretary nominee interspersed with unrelated speeches on global climate change, the Keystone XL Pipeline, kidney transplants, whether certain sites in Plaquemines Parish, La. should be units of the National Park System and various other topics.

Whether those two days of intermittent debate were or weren’t a filibuster, congressional expert Sarah Binder who teaches political science at George Washington University said the Hagel debate “represents a significant change in the Senate's practice of advice and consent.  The issue here is the target of the filibuster-- an appointment to the president's ‘inner cabinet.’ My sense is that there has generally been a strong degree of deference to the president over his appointments to the executive branch-- particularly over the choice of his top appointments to State, Treasury, Justice, and Defense.”

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee to be Defense Secretary, on Capitol Hill, Jan. 31, 2013.

Binder said, “I don't think we should be surprised to find partisan polarization seeping over into these top confirmation battles. Partisanship has spread almost everywhere else in the Senate.”

In the past filibusters and cloture votes were not always an essential part of delaying a nominee.

In the case of John Tower’s nomination to be defense secretary in 1989, President-elect George H.W. Bush announced his nomination in December of 1988, but it was not until March of 1989 that Tower was defeated – not on a cloture vote but on a confirmation vote. The vote came after six days of Senate floor debate.

Tower’s ally Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., denounced the delay: “I have a large problem with the scenario that we won’t vote until every single allegation that comes over the transom is investigated.”

Of all people, Reid knows how effective the threat of a filibuster can be: he was Senate minority whip in 203 and 2004 when Democrats successfully blocked confirmation votes on ten Bush appeals court nominees, including Estrada.

That Democratic filibuster effort won applause from progressive groups. “For months, Senate Democrats have been heroically holding out against President Bush's nominations of extremist judges to America's most powerful courts,” Moveon.org told its supporter in 2003.

Citing Estrada’s withdrawal, Moveon.org said, “Our campaign to stop Bush's extremist nominees has been extraordinarily successful so far.” Estrada’s defeat “was a major victory -- the first time Bush has conceded defeat on any nomination.”

Now for some progressive groups, the delay in Hagel’s confirmation makes the case for changing Senate rules to further limit filibusters.

In a statement Thursday night, George Kohl, Senior Director at the Communications Workers of America, a union that contributed heavily to Democratic candidates in 2012, said, “A real Senate reform package would have made the obstructionists hold the floor and keep 41 of their colleagues with them over a holiday weekend.” Kohl added “the Republicans in the Senate remain intent on breaking new ground in Senate obstruction,” and “Senate Democrats who worked to scuttle more substantial reforms have forfeited their right to complain.”

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee to be defense secretary, on Capitol Hill, Jan. 31, 2013.

Senate Republicans on Thursday stalled further work on confirming former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., as the next secretary of defense, likely prolonging the fight over the Pentagon nominee for at least another week and a half.

The Senate voted 58 to 40 to end debate on Hagel's nomination, falling short of the 60-vote threshold they needed to move toward a final confirmation vote, and subjecting the former Republican senator to an unprecedented, de-facto filibuster. Four Republicans supported Hagel and one GOP senator voted present, though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., switched his vote to "no" in a procedural move to be able to bring up Hagel's nomination at a later date.

Related: Five lessons we've learned from the Hagel fight

The vote is only a temporary setback for the White House, which still views Hagel’s eventual confirmation as a likely proposition. President Barack Obama said in a Google+ hangout shortly after the vote that his "expectation and hope" is that Hagel would eventually be confirmed.

“Senator Hagel is going to be confirmed, if not tomorrow then when the Senate returns from recess,” a White House official said Thursday. (The Senate is away from Washington next week and is scheduled to return for work as soon as Feb. 25.)

The Obama administration’s confidence is rooted in statements Thursday by a number of Republicans who have said they intend to switch their vote after the recess and support moving toward a final vote for Hagel.

The delay still incensed Democrats, though, who argued that the delay was without precedent and risked leaving the military essentially leaderless during a time of war and as major cuts to the defense budget loom. (Outgoing Secretary Leon Panetta continues to serve in his role until Hagel is confirmed, though he had intended to finish his service this week.)

"I'm going to go call Chuck Hagel when I finish here and say, 'I'm sorry,'" Reid said after the cloture vote. He set another cloture vote for Tuesday Feb. 26.

Indeed, the White House scrambled for much of the afternoon to find the handful of Republican votes that would have allowed for Hagel’s confirmation this week. They released a letter in response to GOP senators’ questions about the administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on a diplomatic posting in Benghazi, Libya, and Vice President Joe Biden worked the phones in hopes of finding the necessary votes to overcome the de-facto filibuster.

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The 60-vote threshold means that Hagel’s nomination is, in effect, being subjected to a filibuster. Because Republicans are objecting to ending debate – often a formality in the Senate, where lawmakers give their “unanimous consent” to moving forward with a vote – Democrats must deliver the same 60 votes that they would need under the circumstances of a filibuster to end debate on the Hagel nomination.

Republicans argued that they were not orchestrating a formal filibuster against Hagel – a maneuver which would be unprecedented in the instance of a nominee for the secretary of defense position.

Some GOP senators – led by Sens. John McCain, Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, S.C. – said that they just needed a little more time to thoroughly vet Hagel’s background, despite having served with the former Nebraska senator during the bulk of his two terms in the Senate. Graham and McCain argued that they needed more time than the two days that have elapsed since the armed services panel approved Hagel’s nomination for consideration by the whole Senate.

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 14, 2013 4:56 PM EST

Chuck Hagel’s nomination just hit a major obstacle.

Hagel will not have the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster at tomorrow’s scheduled cloture vote, Republican leadership told Majority Leader Harry Reid Thursday, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

"My Republican colleagues had led us to believe they would not filibuster Senator Chuck Hagel's confirmation as Secretary of Defense,” Reid (D-NV) said in a statement released by his office. “But that has changed. Now, Senate Republicans have made it clear they intend to mount a full-scale filibuster, and block the Senate from holding a final passage vote on Senator Hagel's nomination. Make no mistake: Republicans are trying to defeat Senator Hagel's nomination by filibustering while submitting extraneous requests that will never be satisfied."

All 55 Democrats are supporting Hagel. But just two Republicans have said they would vote for their former colleague, a Republican from Nebraska – Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Mike Johanns (R-NE). Hagel would need three more for his nomination to be able to proceed to an up-or-down vote, which Reid said would happen Saturday.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Roy Blunt (R-MO), and Susan Collins (R-ME) previously said they would not support a filibuster of Hagel, which would have given Hagel enough votes.

“I just do not believe a filibuster is appropriate, and I would oppose such a move," McCain said, adding, "I will try to make that argument to my colleagues.”

But McCain and Blunt have changed their tunes.

Republicans, like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member on the Armed Services Committee that considered Hagel’s nomination, are arguing that what they are doing is not a “filibuster.” They just want more information, they say, on his finances and speeches -- despite the answers Hagel submitted to the standard Senate questionnaire, as well as his contentious hearing.

That's something that caused Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) to accuse Republicans of an "unprecedented" double standard.

McCain, for one, wants more information from the White House on the attacks in Benghazi.

On MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown last week, Blunt was asked if he would support a filibuster of Hagel’s nomination.

“I doubt it; I doubt it,” he said. “I think for somebody who’s going to be there the length of time the president serves, as opposed to a Supreme Court judge, that a majority in the Senate should be able to confirm. I wouldn’t intend to be a part of that majority, but certainly my strong inclination would be that this is a vote that should be done by a majority, rather than a 60-vote standard. And this person is going to leave the day the president leaves. That makes a difference.”

Yet, Blunt’s office contends Blunt’s current position is not a switch.

“He hasn’t changed his original position at all,” said Amber Marchand, Blunt’s spokeswoman. “He’s just pointing out that Senator Hagel and the Obama Admin have not produced all of the information that’s been requested, and there has not been time for a full debate in the Senate, therefore the Senate should not move forward on a vote this week.”

Reid argued Thursday morning on the Senate floor that Republicans were playing politics with national security.

“For the sake of our national security, it’s time to put aside this political theater,” Reid said, accusing them of being more concerned about primaries and the Tea Party.

He said opponents were seeking delay after delay, saying there's been "one stall after another."

Hagel would be just the third cabinet secretary to require the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The other two were Dirk Kempthorne, George W. Bush’s nominee for Interior Secretary in 2006, and C. Williams Verity, Ronald Reagan’s pick to be Commerce Secretary in 1987, according to the Congressional Research Service. 

Both, however, were easily confirmed and cleared the cloture hurdle, 85-8.

There has never been a cabinet secretary nominee who was successfully filibustered.

There have, however, been other high-level, non-judicial nominees, who have also required 60 votes.

For example:

2010- Ben Bernanke (Fed Chair, cloture invoked, passed 77-23)
2009- Hilda Solis (Labor, cloture invoked, but withdrawn)
2006- Dirk Kempthorne (Interior, cloture invoked, passed 85-8)
2005- Rob Portman (USTR, cloture invoked, but vitiated)
2005- John Bolton (US Amb to UN, cloture invoked, nomination rejected 54-38)
2005- Steven L. Johnson (EPA administrator, cloture invoked, passed 61-37)
2003- Michael Leavitt (EPA admin, cloture invoked but withdrawn)
1987- C. Willliam Verity (Commerce, cloture invoked, passed 85-8)

After an angry two-hour debate, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to approve the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense Tuesday, setting the stage for a Senate floor vote on his confirmation, possibly later this week.

The vote was along party lines, 14 to 11, with another likely “no” vote from Sen. David Vitter, R-La. to be added later.

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Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said although some Republican senators strongly oppose Obama’s policies, the vote on Hagel nomination “will not change those policies.”

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Former Senator Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing to become the next secretary of defense on Capitol Hill Jan. 31, 2013.

Levin added that he saw a risk that the defeat of Hagel’s nomination would leave the Defense Department “leaderless” at a time of budget pressures and when “our military is engaged in combat operations overseas.”

Levin said that especially on the day that North Korea had detonated a nuclear device, a delay in approving the nomination would “send the exact wrong message to North Korea.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., cited Hagel’s service as an Army soldier in the Vietnam War as a prime reason to vote for him. “That told me right there everything I needed to know – that he would not hesitate to defend this country,” said Manchin.

But a leading Hagel opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said confirming the former Nebraska senator as defense secretary “will make military conflict in the next four years substantially more likely” because it would encourage the Tehran regime to accelerate its nuclear weapons development program.

Cruz also insinuated that Hagel might have given as-yet undisclosed speeches to “extreme or radical groups” or received money from foreign sources or from defense contractors in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Senate rules require a cabinet nominee to disclose fees and payments he received in excess of $5,000 in the two years prior to the nomination. Hagel complied with that rule, but Cruz sought information about payments he’d gotten in the five years prior to his nomination.

Coming to Hagel’s defense, Levin countered that the nominee had told the committee that in the past ten years he has not received any compensation from foreign governments or entities controlled by a foreign government.

Following Cruz’s harsh criticism of Hagel, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., charged that “Sen. Cruz has gone over the line” by implying Hagel was too cozy with Tehran regime. “He basically has impugned the patriotism of the nominee."

Cruz then answered Nelson, denying that he’d impugned Hagel’s patriotism and said that instead he had questioned his firmness in dealing with Iran.

Levin told Cruz if he had uncovered evidence that Hagel had not truthfully answered the panel’s questions or requests for financial information, he should provide it to the committee.

Two weeks ago, Hagel delivered an often stumbling and awkward performance in his confirmation hearing before the committee, repeatedly having to retract, clarify, apologize for, or amend his views or the manner in which he phrased them.

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The low point came when Levin had to correct Hagel’s clarification on President Barack Obama’s position on Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon.

“It was the most unimpressive performance that I have seen in watching many nominees who came before the committee,” said Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., at Tuesday’s committee meeting, later adding that Hagel’s testimony was “the worst I have seen of any nominee for office.”

McCain said it was “very disturbing” that Hagel had not answered McCain’s question about the success of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq in 2007.

The Arizona Republican also condemned what he called Hagel’s “gratuitous” rhetorical attacks on President George W. Bush.

Another Hagel foe, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said “there’s the left lane in politics, the right lane, and the middle lane – and when it comes to some of the Iranian-Israeli issues, there’s the Chuck Hagel lane … There are very few people who have been this wrong about so many different things.”

Senate Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., indicated in comments to reporters a few hours before the committee Tuesday that Republican senators might insist on extended floor debate on the nomination, perhaps requiring a cloture vote, needing 60 senators, to end debate.

“I wouldn't be surprised if we do have a cloture vote on the Hagel nomination,” McConnell said.

He added that “Every time the (the Democratic) majority files cloture, they call it a filibuster. Cloture vote actually is designed to end debate and to go to a vote.”

He explained that, “Sometimes cloture is not invoked because there has not been adequate information that been requested, yet received. Sometimes cloture is not invoked because you want to kill a nomination. There are a number of members on the committee who feel the requests for information have not yet been met.”

There are 55 senators in the Democratic caucus so if the Republicans insist on a cloture vote, then five GOP senators would need to join the Democrats in ending the debate and moving to a confirmation vote.

NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell contributed to this story

Published at 1:55 p.m. ET: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sharply criticized Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for not deploying U.S. forces so they could rapidly respond to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

“It’s one of the more bizarre statements I have ever seen in my years on this committee,” McCain told Dempsey, accusing him of failing to place U.S. aircraft ahead of time at bases such as Suda Bay, Crete, where they could  have reached Benghazi within 90 minutes on the day of the attack.

Given the threats and attacks on foreign diplomats in the weeks leading up to Sept. 11, 2012, McCain contended, Dempsey ought to have placed forces closer to Benghazi.

McCain called Dempsey’s testimony "simply false" regarding U.S. deployments to deter or respond to an attack in Benghazi.

Dempsey “didn’t take into account the threats to that consulate—and that’s why four Americans died,” McCain angrily told the general. In the Sept. 11 assault on the facility, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith, were killed.

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The Arizona Republican also contended that “it was almost predictable” that “bad things were going to happen in Libya” in the weeks leading up to the attack because the fledgling government was too feeble to maintain control of the country – and he blamed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and President Barack Obama for not deploying a strong U.S. military presence in the country to help keep order.

For his part Dempsey told McCain that “we never received” a request from the State Department to place forces closer to Benghazi to be poised to respond to an attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility.

“So it’s the State Department’s fault?” McCain asked.

“I’m not blaming the State Department,” Dempsey replied. But he said he was concerned on the day of the Benghazi attack about an array of possible assaults on U.S. facilities not only in Libya but in Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, and other locations in the Islamic world.

Dempsey, along with Panetta, was testifying Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Panetta told the panel there were two short-duration attacks that occurred six hours apart. “We were not dealing with a prolonged or continuous assault which could have been brought to an end by a U.S. military response,” Panetta said.

Both Dempsey and Panetta said the best situation would have been to have had U.S. forces on the ground before the attack to defend the facility.

Two other Republican members of the committee, Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, pressed Panetta and Dempsey on how many times they directly briefed Obama on the attack on the day it occurred – the answer was once.

Both Ayotte and Graham implied that Obama ought to have asked more questions and been more involved in keeping apprised of the events in Benghazi in real time. On her Twitter account, Ayotte said while the hearing was in progress, “POTUS outsourced #Benghazi response.”

While the attacks were underway, Graham asked, “did the president show any curiosity about how is this going, what kind of assets do you have helping these people?”

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Panetta replied – citing his experience a former White House chief of staff, “The purpose of staff is to be able to get that kind of information and those staff (members) were working with us.” He added, “The president is well informed about what is going on.”

Graham also questioned Dempsey about Ambassador Stevens’s Aug. 15 cable warning the State Department that the facility in Benghazi couldn’t defend itself if it came under attack. Dempsey told Graham that he was surprised that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not know about that cable.

In his testimony, Panetta said the Department of Defense and U.S. armed forces “did all that we could do in response to the attacks in Benghazi.” He explained that “armed UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones), AC-130 gunships, or fixed-wing fighters with the associated tanking – you’ve got to provide air re-fueling-- armaments – you’ve got to arm all the weapons before you put the on the planes” -- were not in the vicinity of Libya.

He said that even if he’d been able to deploy F-16 fighters or AC-130 gunships over Benghazi in time, “the mission still depends on accurate information about what targets they’re supposed to hit. And we had no forward air controllers there” and no communications with U.S. personnel on the ground.

He said, “because of the distance, it would have taken at least 9 to 12 hours, if not more, to deploy these forces to Benghazi. This was, pure and simple,  -- in the absence as I said of any kind of advance warning -- a problem of distance and time.”

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testifies on the attack on U.S facilities in Benghazi, Libya before the Senate Armed Services Committee Feb. 7, 2013 in Washington, D.C.

He explained that “unfortunately there were no specific indications of an imminent attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi. Without adequate warning, there was not enough time given the speed of the attack for armed military assets to respond.”

In his testimony Panetta also warned about the effects of the automatic spending cuts – called sequestration - that are mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act and are set to begin on March 1.

“If Congress fails to act and sequestration is triggered, and if we also must operate under a year-long continuing resolution (keeping spending at last year’s levels), we would be faced with a significant shortfall in operating funds for our active forces with only seven months remaining in the fiscal year,” he told the committee. “This will damage our national defense and compromise our ability to respond to crises in a dangerous world.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta came to the aid of former Sen. Chuck Hagel, the man President Barack Obama nominated to succeed him, saying on NBC’s Meet the Press, “The political knives were out for Chuck Hagel” during his confirmation hearing last week.

In nearly eight hours of testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee on Thursday, Hagel spent much time revising and clarifying his previous remarks – including a spontaneous error at the hearing itself on whether United States policy toward Iran’s nuclear weapons program was one of containment.

Panetta complained that the members of the committee spent too little time questioning Hagel about the current challenges the Defense Department faces, such as looming budget cuts, and spent too much time examining statements Hagel made in the past.

Panetta insisted to NBC’s Chuck Todd that Hagel was “absolutely” prepared to take his place leading the Defense Department.

Panetta’s backing of Hagel was seconded by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, who said “in helping prepare him for his confirmation hearings, we had several opportunities to talk about strategy. And I found him well-prepared and very thoughtful about it.”

As the Armed Services Committee prepares to hold a hearing Thursday on last September’s attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Panetta said he looked forward “to presenting what we know about what took place.” Congressional Republicans have questioned why there were no U.S. military aircraft or other forces in proximity to Benghazi that could have been dispatched to help defend Ambassador Chris Stevens and other US personnel. Stevens and three others were killed in the attack.

Addressing the Defense Department’s airlift and intelligence-sharing role in assisting the ongoing French military intervention in the North African nation of Mali, Panetta said, “We are now working with France to make sure that al Qaida has no place to hide, even in North Africa.”

Dempsey added that in North Africa “the regimes that you used to maintain control over that space that would, in fact, be part of the solution of keeping al Qaida and its affiliates at bay are no longer there.”

The popular uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring, Dempsey said, “stripped that away” leaving “ungoverned space” or “a period at which geography is less governed than it used to be.” That lack of control has allowed jihadist groups such as al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to flourish.

Turning to Iran and its nuclear program, Panetta said, “The intelligence we have is they have not made the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon. The regime in Tehran is enriching uranium.  They continue to do that.”

He added, “I can't tell you they are, in fact, pursuing a weapon, because that's not what intelligence says they're doing right now. But every indication is they want to continue to increase their nuclear capability. And that's a concern. And that's what we're asking them to stop doing.”

Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday that the Obama administration is “would be prepared to meet bilaterally with the Iranian leadership,” but that talks would need to be serious, have an agreed-upon agenda, and not be merely an exercise.

On the threat of spending cuts, known in Capitol language as “sequester,” scheduled to start on March 1 that are mandated by the Budget Control Act, Panetta said, “If Congress stands back and allows sequester to take place, I think it would really be a shameful and irresponsible act.”

He added that the spending cuts this year – amounting to about 12 percent of Pentagon outlays apart from overseas operations – would “badly damage the readiness of the United States of America.”

Panetta, who served as head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton and as chairman of the House Budget Committee in the late 1980s, said, “As somebody who's worked with budgets throughout my life, in order to deal with the deficit problem, you've got to deal with entitlements. You have to deal with revenues. And you have to deal with discretionary (spending).”

Although Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona have accused Obama of failing to take the lead in finding a way to avoid the cuts required by the Budget Control Act, Panetta said, “I think he's pushing as hard as he can…. The president of the United States has indicated the concern about sequester. He's indicated his concern about maintaining a strong national defense.  And he's proposed a solution to this. The ball is in Congress's court. They have got to take action to delay sequester.”

Updated at 5:53 p.m. ET – Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama’s choice to be secretary of defense, finished a day-long marathon confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday, enduring nearly eight hours of testy and skeptical questions from Republicans.

At the start of Thursday’s hearing, it seemed nearly certain that the Senate would vote to confirm Hagel. But the nominee labored at certain points during the day to clarify and explain his comments. Whether his occasional stumbles were serious enough to jeopardize his confirmation was not clear by the end of the testimony.

There are 55 senators in the Democratic caucus and 45 Senate Republicans, so if there’s no filibuster, Hagel would seem assured of confirmation. The last time the Senate rejected a Cabinet nominee was in 1989 when there was a Republican president and a Democratic-controlled Senate. 

Republican senators confronted Hagel with quotations from statements he had made months or years ago – and sometimes he apologized for them or amended them.

Late in the day Sen. Mike Lee, R- Utah, asked Hagel whether he’d said in 2003 that Israel keeps Palestinians “caged up like animals” and whether he still believes that.

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“Like many things I’ve said, I would like to go back and change the words and the meaning,” Hagel told Lee. “If I had a chance to go back and edit it, I would. I regret that I used those words.”

But he said he’d made his statement “in a larger context … (addressing) the frustration in what’s happening (in Israel) which is not in Israel’s interest” and mentioned the need “to find ways that we can help bring peace and security to Israel.”

Quizzed by both Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Sen. David Vitter, R- La., on a statement he’d made calling the Iranian government a “legitimate” one, Hagel said, “I should have said ‘recognized’ instead of ‘legitimate.’”

At one point he told Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R- Ga., regarding U.S. policy toward Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons: “I’ve just been handed a note that I misspoke and said I supported the president’s position on ‘containment.’ If I said that, I meant to say that obviously – his position on containment – we don’t have a position on containment.”

Hagel then said, “I’ve had more attention paid to my words in the last eight weeks than I ever thought possible.”

This prompted Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D- Mich., to intervene, “Just to make sure your correction is clear, we do have a position on containment – which is we do not favor containment.” Hagel quickly concurred with Levin’s statement.

Hagel told the panel in his opening remarks that he is “fully committed to the president's goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” and that “all options must be on the table to achieve that goal. My policy is one of prevention, and not one of containment and the President has made clear that is the policy of our government.”

At another point, Hagel, explaining his criticism quoted in a 2008 book by Aaron David Miller, of “the Jewish lobby” and his allegation that “it intimidates a lot of people” in Congress – comments for which Hagel has apologized – said he ought to not have used the word “intimidates.”

“I should have used ‘influence,’” he said.

Later, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., challenged Hagel to “name one dumb thing we’ve been goaded into doing” by the pro-Israel lobby or to identify one member of Congress whom the pro-Israel lobby had intimidated. Hagel said, “I didn't have in mind a single person," and did not identify any policy the U.S. government had been goaded into.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, played Hagel a recording of an interview Hagel did in 2009 with an al Jazeera program. A listener submitted a question asking about “the image of the United States is that of the world’s bully” and whether the United States needed “to change the perception and the reality” before asking other nations to reduce their arsenals. In that 2009 program Hagel began his reply by saying, “Her observation is a good one … .”

When Cruz asked Hagel to explain this reply, he said Thursday, “I think my comment was it was a relevant and good observation. I don’t think I said that I agree with it.”

Early in the testimony, the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s 2007 surge of U.S. troops into Iraq became the heated focus of the hearing.

Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., repeatedly pressed Hagel, a fellow Vietnam War veteran, on whether he had been right or wrong to say that the 2007 surge was “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam.”

When McCain angrily said “Will you please answer the question?” Hagel told McCain “I’m not going to give you a yes or no answer … I’ll defer that judgment to history.”

When McCain shot back that Hagel had been wrong about the surge, Hagel said his “most dangerous blunder” comment had been “not just about the 2007 surge but the overall war of choice going into Iraq” in 2003.

As a senator, Hagel voted for the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to invade Iraq, but later turned critical of Bush’s conduct of the operation.

Other Republicans on the committee repeatedly pressed Hagel on his support for endorsement of Global Zero, the movement calling for abolition of nuclear weapons by 2030.

Hagel served on the Global Zero U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission which issued a report last May calling for an 80 percent reduction in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Hagel told ranking Republican committee member Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma that his position “has never been unilateral disarmament.”

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Former Senator Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to be Defense Secretary, on Capitol Hill, Jan. 31, 2013.

And he said the Global Zero report was discussing “illustrative possibilities” and “scenarios” and wasn’t urging specific policies.

But last May’s Global Zero report, which Hagel signed on to, says that a drastically smaller U.S. arsenal could be negotiated bilaterally with Russia – “or implemented unilaterally.”

In his opening statement Hagel pledged that he would maintain an effective nuclear arsenal. “America's nuclear deterrent over the last 65 years has played a central role in ensuring global security and the avoidance of a World War III. I am committed to modernizing our nuclear arsenal,” he said.

Hagel, who was seriously wounded while serving as an Army infantryman in Vietnam, was a Republican senator from Nebraska from 1997 to 2009 but did not support Republican presidential candidates McCain in 2008 or Mitt Romney last year.