{"id":255252,"date":"2016-07-11T11:31:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T11:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/who-is-general-michael-flynn\/"},"modified":"2016-07-11T11:31:44","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T11:31:44","slug":"who-is-general-michael-flynn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/who-is-general-michael-flynn\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is General Michael Flynn?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

When I first heard that Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence
\n Agency (DIA) under President Obama, was rumored<\/a>
\n to be on Donald Trump\u2019s short list for the GOP vice presidential nomination,
\n my ears pricked up. I wrote about Flynn here<\/a>,
\n and Antiwar.com has covered<\/a>
\n the controversy<\/a>
\n surrounding<\/a>
\n the 2012
\n DIA report<\/a> that warned<\/a>
\n the Obama administration that its policy of regime change in Syria would lead
\n to the rise of a Sunni Islamic \u201ccaliphate\u201d in Syria \u2013 a warning that fell on
\n deaf ears. <\/p>\n

Flynn was forced out of his job as DIA director because, he says, his views
\n \u201cdid not fit the narrative.\u201d But what narrative is he talking about? In order
\n to understand this intramural fight within the highest levels of the intelligence
\n and military communities, we have to go back to the Bush administration, and
\n the Iraq war.<\/p>\n

As the US was fighting a losing battle against Iraqi insurgents, Gen. David
\n Petraeus arose to show us the way forward, and the myth of the successful \u201csurge\u201d
\n was born. The Petraeus strategy was to recruit Sunni tribesmen in the Iraqi
\n hinterlands bordering Syria to fight al-Qaeda, to win their \u201chearts and minds.\u201d
\n In reality, this meant putting them on the American payroll: we\u2019ll never know
\n how many millions of taxpayer dollars went to financing this effort, but no
\n doubt it was a considerable sum. <\/p>\n

As the tribes took on al-Qaeda, the \u201csurge\u201d was declared a success \u2013 but the
\n blowback wasn\u2019t long in coming. These same tribes soon turned against the central
\n government in Baghdad, and their American protectors, while the remnants of
\n al-Qaeda in Iraq migrated across the border to Syria, where they became the
\n core of what morphed into ISIS. Those Sunni \u201chearts and minds\u201d were now pledging
\n allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the \u201ccaliph\u201d of the Islamic State.<\/p>\n

The Petraeus strategy was the logical extension of the Bush administration\u2019s
\n \u201cSunni turn,\u201d which Seymour Hersh writes about here<\/a>: \n<\/p>\n

\u201cTo undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration
\n has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In
\n Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia\u2019s government, which
\n is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the
\n Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in
\n clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these
\n activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a
\n militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Having finished off Iraq, the neocons in the Bush administration were setting
\n their sights on Iran. In league with Prince Bandar, then head of Saudi intelligence
\n \u2013 and a close friend of the Bushes and Vice…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first heard that Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under President Obama, was rumored to be on Donald Trump\u2019s short list for the GOP vice presidential nomination, my ears pricked up. I wrote about Flynn here, and Antiwar.com has covered the controversy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-255252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}