Flynn offered key national security post

With three decades of military experience, Flynn served as director of Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 until he was ousted in 2014. Even as an adviser to the president-elect, he still engaged in foreign influence peddling.

First, the good news, though it turns out to be not as good as it may seem.

Flynn led the intelligence operations of Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, and “was the embodiment of Donald Rumsfeld’s view that the world is the battlefield”, Scahill wrote. I don’t know who they supported in the election. It focuses on killing targets.

The reports of Flynn’s likely appointment came soon after Trump’s controversial selection of Stephen Bannon as the Chief Strategist. He accused the Obama administration in a New York Post op-ed in July of failing to design a coherent strategy for opposing the Islamic State group.

Alptekin said Friday that Flynn’s editorial supporting Erdogan was not connected to his company’s lobbying or the Turkish government.

“We need to have some tough love conversations with the leaders of countries who pretend to be our friends, but who also collaborate with our enemies”, Flynn had said in his latest book that hit the book stands in August. Sarah Chayes, who worked with Flynn during his tenure running military intelligence in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011, told The New York Times that “his thinking process is not sufficiently analytical to test some streams against others and make sense of it, or draw consistent conclusions”. “General Flynn is one of the country’s foremost experts on military and intelligence matters and he will be an invaluable asset to me and my administration”. “He’d risen to the level of his incompetence”.

Some of Flynn’s former colleagues-including two who think that he was sacked unfairly and that he’ll make a fine national security adviser-say that the dismissal embittered him.

What set Flynn apart after he shed his uniform in 2014 was the blistering public criticism he quickly leveled at the White House and Pentagon, taking issue with a wide range of national security policies, including the administration’s approach to fighting the Islamic State group and, more generally, its handling of global affairs. In February of this year, Flynn tweeted, “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL: please forward this to others: the truth fears no questions…”, accompanied by a link to a YouTube video. “I was mortified”, one ex-associate told me.

Although Bigley said there was no restriction on someone like Flynn working for foreign companies upon leaving office he said Flynn would have to inform background investigators of these business relationships in order to be able to continue to receive classified briefings. He said he felt like a lone voice in government because he believed the U.S. was less safe from extremist Islamic terrorism in 2014 than it was before the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The effect will be to alienate numerous world’s Muslims, he says, and send them “into the arms of jihadist recruiters” who contend that “America seeks to destroy their religion”.

Trump, a reality television star, business mogul and political newcomer, also rolled out new teams that will interact with the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department and other national security agencies as part of the government transition before his January 20 inauguration.

In some administrations, the national security adviser focuses mainly on reconciling the views of the secretaries of state and defense, then presenting them as options to the president. The withdrawal began in 2007 under President George W Bush. Like Trump, who pushed a decidedly pro-Russian policy platform during his bid for the presidency, Flynn believes that the US should work more closely with Russia to defeat ISIS, the Times reports, and would likely move to align USA foreign policy with that of Russia.