Intelligence Picks Include Torture Proponent, Muslim Critic

Another Trump pick is Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas for CIA Director.

A conservative Republican, Mr Pompeo enrolled as a teenager in the Military Academy at West Point and graduated first in his class in 1986.

Flynn was a fierce critic of President Barack Obama’s military and foreign policy long before he began advising Trump on national security issues during the presidential campaign.

He is said to have been successful at hunting down terrorists, knows the intelligence community very well, and is a cyber expert. Flynn is a champion of other foreign policy themes Trump pushed during the campaign, including renegotiating the Iran nuclear deal.

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on Friday dismissed Trump’s comments about waterboarding as the talk of a “first-time neophyte running for office”.

In this photo taken November 17, 2016, Sen.

The man whom President-elect Donald Trump picked as his national security adviser has said he doesn’t believe that all cultures are “morally equivalent” and once described Islam as “a cancer”, comments that have many in the Muslim community anxious about what his new job might mean for them. Sessions is also seen as a right-wing hardliner who identifies with his former position as a prosecutor and will be eager to aggressively enforce laws. Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo to head the Central Intelligence Agency, signaling a sharp rightward shift in USA security policy as he begins to form his Cabinet. An immigration hawk today, Sessions first made national news when allegations of racism cost him a judgeship. He was turned down, in an extremely rare step.

They said the Alabama lawyer called the NAACP un-American, referred to a white lawyer working with black clients as a race-traitor, and joked about supporting the Ku Klux Klan until learning its members smoked pot.

Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter later said that of the 10,000 votes he cast as a senator, this was the one he regretted: “My vote against candidate Sessions for the federal court was a mistake”.

So, will Sessions face deja-vu in the senate all over again?

A member of the Senate since 1996, Sessions is an outspoken voice against giving undocumented immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship and in favor of reduced spending and a tough approach to fighting crime.

With three decades of military experience, Flynn served as director of Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 until he was ousted in 2014.

Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, was disparaging of Mr Flynn in hacked emails that were leaked online.

“Given some of his past statements and his staunch opposition to immigration reform, I am very concerned about what he would do with the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice”, Schumer said.

“I am pleased that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn will be by my side as we work to defeat radical Islamic terrorism, navigate geopolitical challenges and keep Americans safe at home and overseas”, Trump said in a statement. The South Korean delegation, which is set to leave the USA on Saturday, has been holding numerous meetings to ensure the Seoul-Washington military alliance and their strong economic ties continue under the Trump administration. Two years later, amid sharp differences over Islamist insurgencies and a reportedly chaotic management style, Flynn was out.

A number of Middle Eastern leaders – most notably Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi – cheered Trump’s surprise victory last week, applauding the Republican’s leadership style and predicting improved relations with the White House under a Trump presidency. That success was dotted with Pentagon investigations – including one internal Pentagon probe that substantiated Flynn’s inappropriate sharing of classified intelligence with allies – and his uniformed career ended when he was unceremoniously pushed out of the Defense Intelligence Agency after heated run-ins with the Obama administration over its ISIS strategy.