Trump’s appointments

Stuff reports:

President-elect Donald Trump is announcing his choices for three key administration jobs today, naming Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Kansas Rep Mike Pompeo to head the CIA and former military intelligence chief Michael Flynn as his national security adviser.

All three have been fierce critics of President Barack Obama and current US policy. …

Flynn was a critic of Obama’s military and foreign policy long before he began advising Trump on national security issues during the presidential campaign. As national security adviser, Flynn would work in the West Wing and have frequent access to the new president.

The 57-year-old built a reputation as an astute intelligence professional and straight talker when he became the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012. After retiring two years later, he made clear he took issue with the Obama administration’s approach to global affairs and fighting Islamic State militants.

Flynn’s appointment may be the most important. He is willing to call a spade a spade and recognise that the Islamic element of Islamic State is not coincidental – recognising the political element as well as the religious.

Flynn was a three star general whose background is mainly intelligence (good for the NSA). He headed up the Defence Intelligence Agency and was Assistant Director of National Intelligence.

He was deployed for the Grenada liberation in the 1980s and has served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It was Obama who appointed him to head the DIA, but since retiring he has been very critical of their strategy. He is in fact a registered Democrat.

I suspect Flynn’s appointment will see a change of strategy in Syria where effectively it will be conceded Assad is the lesser evil (but still evil) and the US will work with Russia and Assad to remove territory from Islamic State control.