A registered Democrat from a middle-class family in Rhode Island, Flynn entered the military from an ROTC program, not from West Point, and specialized in military intelligence. He was associated particularly with the Special Forces assassination campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 15 years.
Flynn clashed with the Obama administration in 2014 and was fired by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper because of his insistence on portraying the conflict with Al Qaeda and later ISIS as a war against Muslims. According to press reports, his obsession led to espousing what subordinates called "Flynn facts," assertions that bore no relation to reality but bolstered the concept that the US was engaged in a "world war" against Islamist militants.
Like Sessions, a major qualification for Flynn is unconditional loyalty to Trump. He signed on early as an adviser on national security issues, backing Trump throughout a campaign in which virtually the entire military-intelligence apparatus, including most Republican specialists in this area, supported Hillary Clinton.
He has since evinced a deepening obsession with the conflict with Islam, claiming that sharia, a form of Islamic law, is spreading across the United States, and that the Obama administration has failed to fight the spread of ISIS because it refuses to use the term "radical Islamic terrorism" to characterize the threat.
According to one press account, Flynn appeared before a right-wing group in Texas last summer and declared, "I don't see Islam as a religion. I see it as a political ideology." He continued, arguing that Islam will "mask itself as a religion globally, especially in the West and especially in the United States" Because it can hide itself and protect itself behind what we call freedom of religion."
Flynn has backed Trump's declarations in support of torture, including waterboarding, saying in one interview that he was a "believer in leaving as many options on the table right up until the last possible minute." Most notoriously, he delivered an anti-Clinton, anti-Obama diatribe at the Republican National Convention, during which delegates began chanting, "Lock her up. Lock her up." Flynn joined in.
For CIA director, Trump has chosen Republican Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas, a three-term congressman from Wichita with close ties to the billionaire Koch brothers, whose Koch Industries holding company is headquartered there.
A West Point graduate, Pompeo served in an armored unit of the Army from 1986 to 1991, but was not deployed overseas. After leaving the military, he launched an aerospace components manufacturer in southern California, which eventually relocated to Wichita, Kansas, a center of light aircraft manufacturing. There Pompeo began his political career in 2010, running to succeed an incumbent Republican who stepped down to run for US Senate.
His first campaign was notable because he baited his Democratic opponent, Raj Goyle, the US-born son of Indian immigrant doctors, with billboards urging, "Vote American, Vote Pompeo." Supporters distributed scurrilous attacks on Goyle as a "turban topper" and non-Christian, in an area that has long been a hotbed of religious right activity centered on attacks on local abortion providers.
Pompeo supported Senator Marco Rubio in the Republican presidential primaries, only endorsing Trump after Rubio withdrew. Unlike Sessions and Flynn, his political connection to the new administration is vice president-elect Mike Pence, not Trump himself. Pompeo and Pence served in Congress together from 2010 to 2014, and developed a political rapport as part of the most conservative faction of the House Republican majority.
Throughout his six years in the House, Pompeo has stood for the most militaristic and anti-democratic policies, backing the illegal bulk data collection by the National Security Agency when it was exposed by Edward Snowden. He is a member of the House Intelligence Committee and was also chosen to serve on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, set up by the House Republican leadership to undermine the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
After the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, Pompeo denounced Muslim clerical leaders for encouraging such attacks. He also stridently denounced the six-nation Iran nuclear deal, claiming that the Obama administration had surrendered to "the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism." On the eve of his nomination to head the CIA, he went on Twitter to declare his determination to terminate the agreement with Teheran.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
