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Trunp's Geopilitical Adviser is Disgraced Former Head of DIA
#1
Ever since former head of the DIA, General Michael Flynn outed Obama and the White House about knowingly using ISIS to defeat Assad in Syria and thereby opening the door to a Salafist state, Flynn has become a non-person in Washington - despite being absolutely right in his prediction. He fairly frequently gives interviews (carried by RT) but the US press completely blanks him -- proving again, if proof were needed, that the MSM work arm in arm with the Neocons who rule the US and Europe.

There are a number of senior Pentagon officers who have openly stated that the US needs to work with Russia on security issues, particularly in Syria. But these views, like Flynn's are ignored.

And so we see a state of "martial bliss" existing between some top Pentagon brass and the top neocon foreign affairs policy wonks in Washington. Such an important fracture speaks volumes. Some might even call it a state of disassociation or schizophrenia.

It now appears that Trump is being informally advised by Flynn on foreign policy issues.

From Reuters.

Quote:Politics | Fri Feb 26, 2016 6:04pm EST

Trump being advised by ex-U.S. Lieutenant General who favors closer Russia ties

WASHINGTON | BY MARK HOSENBALL AND STEVE HOLLAND





[Image: ?m=02&d=20160226&t=2&i=1120639750&w=644&...EC2Q6G4URJ]
Then Defense Intelligence Agency director U.S. Army Lt. General Michael Flynn testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on ''Worldwide Threats'' in Washington February 4, 2014.
REUTERS/GARY CAMERON



Donald Trump is receiving foreign policy advice from a former U.S. military intelligence chief who wants the United States to work more closely with Russia to resolve global security issues, according to three sources.
The sources, former foreign policy officials in past administrations, said retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who was chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama from 2012-2014, has been informally advising Trump.
Trump, who is leading the Republican race to be the party's presidential candidate in November's election, said earlier this month that he would soon release a list of his foreign policy advisers, but has yet to do so. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Flynn.
Flynn declined to comment when asked by Reuters whether he is advising Trump. Asked to describe his views about ties with Russia, he referred Reuters to his public statements.
The question of who has been advising Trump on national security issues has become more pertinent as prospects that the New York real estate mogul will secure the Republican nomination, possibly within weeks, have increased.
Trump won the surprise endorsement of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Friday, the most prominent mainstream Republican to come on board.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who won popularity for his handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has also been in regular contact with Trump, said a former top aide to Giuliani.
A close associate of Flynn said that Trump was not the only presidential hopeful who had consulted the former DIA chief. "He responds to one and all but is not working for any one," the associate said.
Trump has struck a notably different stance on Russia from his main rivals for the nomination, calling President Vladimir Putin "highly respected" and advocating a warming of now icy bilateral ties.
Other Republican candidates have frequently taken to bashing Putin and have cited his military interventions in Ukraine and Syria as evidence that President Barack Obama has been weak in standing up to the Russian leader.
Trump has vowed to destroy Islamic State and to undertake an aggressive rebuilding of the U.S. military, but has signaled more flexibility than his rivals on some issues - for example, by not vowing to tear up the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran.

SAT WITH PUTIN
Flynn resigned from his position as the head of the Pentagon's main intelligence agency a year before his term was officially due to end.
Flynn raised eyebrows among some U.S. foreign policy veterans when he was pictured sitting at the head table with Putin at a banquet in Moscow late last year celebrating Russia Today, an international broadcasting network funded by the Russian government.
His son Michael G. Flynn, who acts as his chief of staff, declined comment on the banquet and on the reasons for his father's departure from the Pentagon.
Flynn told Russia Today in an interview published on Dec. 10 that the United States and Russia should work together to resolve the Syrian civil war and defeat Islamic State.
The Obama administration has protested Russia's military intervention on behalf of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, accusing Moscow of hitting opposition forces rather than ISIS.
"Right now we have essentially the U.S. strategy and we have a Russian strategy in the region that does not appear to be in line with each other. And I think we have to step back and try to figure out how do we align those," Flynn told Russia Today.
Flynn was also quoted this month as telling German magazine Der Spiegel that the Iraq war launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush was a mistake that gave rise to Islamic State.
Trump has often strongly condemned the Iraq invasion.
A former U.S. intelligence official who worked with Flynn said the retired general believes in a more aggressive approach to U.S. interests around the world.
"He's a sharp guy, he understands foreign policy and national security and really understands intelligence," said the official. "His positions and opinions are not always in line with popular thinking."
Giuliani's office did not respond to a request for comment on his relationship with Trump.
Randy Mastro, a New York lawyer who was a deputy mayor in Giuliani's New York City administration, said Giuliani has close ties to Trump. "I know that Rudy and Donald Trump have a long-standing relationship and personal friendship that goes back many years, and they do speak to each other on a regular basis," said Mastro.



The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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#2
Neo-cons declare war on Trump, some prefer Hillary

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/tr...1?lo=ap_a1

Donald Trump calls the Iraq War a lie-fueled fiasco, admires Vladimir Putin and says he would be a "neutral" arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians. When it comes to America's global role he asks, "Why are we always at the forefront of everything?"
Even more than his economic positions, Trump's foreign policy views challenge GOP orthodoxy in fundamental ways. But while parts of the party establishment are resigning themselves or even backing Trump's runaway train, one group is bitterly digging in against him: the hawkish foreign policy elites known as neoconservatives.

In interviews with POLITICO, leading neocons people who promoted the Iraq War, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable said Trump would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy and vowed never to support him. So deep is their revulsion that several even say they could vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in November.
"Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin," said Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department official under George W. Bush and a strategic theorist who argues for a muscular U.S. role abroad. Trump's election would be "an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy," Cohen said, adding that "he has already damaged it considerably."
Cohen, an Iraq war backer who is often called a neoconservative but said he does not identify himself that way, said he would "strongly prefer a third party candidate" to Trump, but added: "Probably if absolutely no alternative: Hillary."
In a March 1 interview with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton over Trump. "I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump," he said. "She would be vastly preferable to Trump."
Cohen helped to organize an open letter signed by several dozen GOP foreign policy insiders many of whom are not considered neocons that was published Wednesday night by the military blog War on the Rocks. "[W]e are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head," the letter declared. It cited everything from Trump's "admiration for foreign dictators" to his "inexcusable" support for "the expansive use of torture."
The letter was signed by dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, including Boot; Peter Feaver, a former senior national security aide in George W. Bush's White House; Robert Zoellick, a former deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official; and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former Bush State Department official.
Several other neocons said they find themselves in an impossible position, constitutionally incapable of voting for Clinton but repelled by a Republican whose foreign policy views they consider somewhere between nonexistent and dangerous and disconnected from their views about American power and values abroad.
"1972 was the first time I was old enough to vote for president, and I did not vote. Couldn't vote for McGovern for foreign policy reasons, nor for Nixon because of Watergate," said Elliott Abrams, a former national security council aide to George W. Bush who specializes in democracy and the Middle East. "I may be in the same boat in 2016, unable to vote for Trump or Clinton."
Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, something of a dean of Washington neoconservatives, said he would seek out a third option before choosing between Trump and Clinton.
"If it's Trump-Clinton, I'd work with others to recruit a strong conservative third party candidate, and do my best to help him win (which by the way would be more possible than people think, especially when people finally realize Trump shouldn't be president and Hillary is indicted)," Kristol wrote in an email.
Kristol and Abrams have advised Florida senator Marco Rubio, the preferred choice of several neoconservatives, who admire his call for "moral clarity" in foreign policy and strong emphasis on human rights and democracy.
Alarm brewing for months in GOP foreign policy circles burst into public view last week, when Robert Kagan, a key backer of the Iraq War and American global might, wrote in the Washington Post that a Trump nomination would force him to cross party lines.
"The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton," Kagan warned. "The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."
In an interview, Kagan said his opposition to Trump "has nothing to do with foreign policy."

"What it has to do with is the health and safety of American democracy," he added. "I don't even know what Donald Trump's foreign policy is. I don't think anybody does."Though Trump's foreign policy views don't fit any familiar category, he has outlined several clear positions at odds with neoconservative doctrine.
While neoconservatives believe America plays a unique role in defending global order and Western values, Trump has long complained about America's military presence abroad and the protection the U.S. provides to prosperous allies like Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea.
Neocons depict Russian President Vladimir Putin as a sinister tyrant challenging America; Trump calls Putin a strong leader with whom he'd "get along very well" and proposes a more cooperative relationship with Moscow.
Neocons believe the U.S. must forcefully defend Israel. But while Trump insists his presidency would be "the best thing that could ever happen to Israel," he has alarmed pro-Israel Republicans with his pledge to be a "neutral" arbiter in talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Trump has shown little interest in the neoconservative cause of an interventionist foreign policy guided by principles like democracy and human rights. And he says the neocon project of invading Iraq may have been "the worst decision" in presidential history.
Some conservative foreign policy insiders opposed to Trump stop short of saying they would vote for Clinton, despite elements of her foreign policy record, such as her 2002 Senate vote to authorize force against Iraq, that they find appealing.
"I could never vote for Clinton under any circumstances," said Abrams.
"I would ask Bob [Kagan] what job he thinks Sidney Blumenthal will have at the NSC before pulling the lever for Clinton," he added a reference to the longtime Clinton adviser and bete noir of the right.
Danielle Pletka, a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute said she, too, would seek some alternative to Trump and Clinton.

"[W]hile I will never vote for a Democrat in wolf's clothing like Trump, I will also never vote for a candidate as dishonest, as rapacious, as Hillary Clinton," she wrote in an email. "My vote is a precious thing, and while I will certainly go to the polls, if those are my choices, I will write someone in. And no, it won't be Bloomberg. "The word "neoconservative" is subject to interpretation, and some conservatives consider it pejorative. Originally used to describe Democrats who adopted hard-line anti-Communist views during the Cold War, the word's colloquial meaning roughly amounts to "hawkish GOP foreign policy intellectual."
Neocons have shown little enthusiasm for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has singled them out for scorn. Speaking to Iowa voters in December, Cruz bashed what he called the "crazy neocon invade-every-country-on-earth and send our kids to die in the Middle East" element of his party.
Cruz has also attacked Rubio in debates for supporting military action to topple Middle Eastern dictators in Libya and Syria, and has said the world was better off with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in power.
But the neocons reserve special scorn for Trump.
"A Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power," Boot writes in the March 7 issue of the Weekly Standard, along with Council on Foreign Relations economist Benn Steill.
Steill and Boot who also has advised Rubio call Trump "singularly ill-equipped to manage the resulting turmoil" from his policies. They recall the September radio interview in which Trump confused the Kurds with Iran's elite military Quds force and admitted he was unfamiliar with the leaders of major Islamist terror groups.
Cohen also added that he doesn't oppose Trump solely on foreign policy grounds, calling the Manhattan mogul "the most dangerous demagogue in American politics in my lifetime."
Several other prominent neoconservatives, including former Bush Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz and Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, did not respond to requests for comment.


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#3
"Neocons for Hilary" sounds like a painful medical condition, rather like hemorrhoids, I imagine.

Actually, "Hemorrhoids for Hilary" sounds a lot better...
::laughingdog::
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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#4
I'm NO fan of Mitt Romney, but boy did I like his tearing Trump apart today.....::bowtie::
If you didn't catch it, do!
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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#5
A party of frauds, liars and con artists is upset because their front-runner is one. Go figure.
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#6
Tracy Riddle Wrote:A party of frauds, liars and con artists is upset because their front-runner is one. Go figure.

Word.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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#7
Magda Hassan Wrote:
Tracy Riddle Wrote:A party of frauds, liars and con artists is upset because their front-runner is one. Go figure.

Word.

I had actually not heard Trump speak on the 'stump' until yesterday....before that only the standard sound bites....not only is he a fraud, liar and con artist, but he is a terrible speaker and obvious pin head about the World [hard to believe he was a student at Princeton once - must not have attended any classes]. The Rubio's and Trump's schoolyard 'discussion' of the size of Trump's hands and his genitals :Depressed: was a new low in America's already low 'political debate'.....yet somehow he attracts a certain FRIGHTENING base [and I mean BASE] of angry White males and some angry White women who self identify with the Republicans [where no one but perhaps the ultra rich should]. The thought of Trump being President is horrifying....but were Hillary to become President would mean endless unprovoked wars and secret government business as usual...... It is hard to see anything good coming out of this Presidential race unless Sanders were to win, which I've never believed possible [read it would not be allowed]. America sinks further into its own foul mire it has built its empire upon. The spectacle is simply nauseating as the Empire self-immolates, and takes the Planet with it. One can only hope the American People wake up to the way they have been tricked, lied to, taken advantage of, suckered, impoverished, denied their freedom and democracy, having denied freedom and democracy to others Worldwide, and more. And now the hidden forces are talking openly of a war with Russia and have the 'excuse' of Ukraine to use whenever they so choose.

Madness, all is madness, based on lies. ::willynilly::


Beam me up Scotty!!::beammeup::
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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#8
If Trump was black, and in the future...

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#9
Donald the Dangerous


Nicholas Kristof MARCH 5, 2016






Photo [Image: 06KRISTOF-master675.jpg]

Donald J. Trump

IS there any scarier nightmare than President Donald J. Trump in a tense international crisis, indignant and impatient, with his sweaty finger on the nuclear trigger?
"Trump is a danger to our national security," John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to the State Department under President George W. Bush, bluntly warned.
Most of the discussion about Trump focuses on domestic policy. But checks and balances mean that there are limits to what a president can achieve domestically, while the Constitution gives a commander in chief a much freer hand abroad.
That's what horrifies America-watchers overseas. Der Spiegel, the German magazine, has called Trump the most dangerous man in the world. Even the leader of a Swedish nationalist party that started as a neo-Nazi white supremacist group has disavowed Trump. J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, reflected the views of many Britons when she tweeted that Trump is worse than Voldemort.
Leading American conservative thinkers on foreign policy issued an open letter a few days ago warning that they could not support Trump. The signatories include Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of homeland security, Robert Zoellick, the former deputy secretary of state, and more than 100 others.
"Mr. Trump's own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe," the letter declared.
A starting point is Trump's remarkable ignorance about international affairs. And every time he tries to reassure, he digs the hole deeper. Asked in the latest debate to name people whose foreign policy ideas he respects, Trump offered Gen. Jack Keane, and mispronounced his name.
Asked about Syria, Trump said last year that he would unleash ISIS to destroy Syria's government. That is insane: ISIS is already murdering or enslaving Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities; executing gays; destroying antiquities; oppressing women. And Trump wants ISIS to capture Damascus?
A second major concern is that Trump would start a trade war, or a real war. Trump told The New York Times in January that he favored a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods, then denied ever having said such a thing. The Times produced the audio (that part of the conversation was on the record) in which Trump clearly backed the 45 percent tariff, risking a trade war between the world's two largest economies.
Trump has also called for more U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq, and raised the prospect of bombing North Korean nuclear sites. A poorly informed, impatient and pugnacious leader can cause devastation, and that's true of either Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump.
The third risk is to America's reputation and soft power. Both Bush and President Obama worked hard to reassure the world's 1.6 billion Muslims that the U.S. is not at war with Islam. Trump has pretty much declared war on all Muslims.
The damage to America's image is already done, even if Trump is never elected. Simply as a blowhard who gains headlines around the world, he reinforces caricatures of the United States and tarnishes our global reputation. He turns America into an object of derision. He is America's Ahmadinejad.
On Twitter, I suggested that Trump was pugnacious, pugilistic, preening and puerile, and asked for other P words to describe him. The result was a deluge: petulant, pandering, pathetic, peevish, prickly, pernicious, patronizing, Pantagruelian, prevaricating, phony, presumptuous, potty-mouthed, provocative, pompous, predatory and so many more, including the troubling "probably president."
There's something heartbreaking about the prospect that America's next commander in chief may be a global joke, a man regarded in most foreign capitals as a buffoon, and a dangerous one.
Trump is not particularly ideological, and it's possible that as president he would surround himself with experts and would back off extreme positions. It was a good sign that on Friday he appeared to reverse himself and pledged that he would not order the U.S. military to commit war crimes, yet that's such an astonishingly low bar that I can't believe I just wrote this sentence!
In any case, Trump is nothing if not unpredictable, and it seems equally plausible that he would start new wars. It's a risk that few sensible people want to take. As Mitt Romney notes, "This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss."
"Why, at a moment when the country desperately needs our A-team, would we send in the clowns?"
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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#10
Peter Lemkin Wrote:Donald the Dangerous


Nicholas Kristof MARCH 5, 2016

IS there any scarier nightmare than President Donald J. Trump in a tense international crisis, indignant and impatient, with his sweaty finger on the nuclear trigger?
"Trump is a danger to our national security," John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to the State Department under President George W. Bush, bluntly warned.

The usual crap from Kristof. What 'advice' was this so called 'legal adviser' Bellinger giving the idiot Bush when he was around throwing bombs all over the Middle East, Asia and Africa and invading peaceful countries?


Peter Lemkin Wrote:Asked about Syria, Trump said last year that he would unleash ISIS to destroy Syria's government. That is insane: ISIS is already murdering or enslaving Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities; executing gays; destroying antiquities; oppressing women. And Trump wants ISIS to capture Damascus?
Damn. Bush and Obama have already beaten Trump to it and unleashed ISIS on the world. And they would love to get some one new and pliable in Damascus too.


Peter Lemkin Wrote:A second major concern is that Trump would start a trade war, or a real war. Trump told The New York Times in January that he favored a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods, then denied ever having said such a thing. The Times produced the audio (that part of the conversation was on the record) in which Trump clearly backed the 45 percent tariff, risking a trade war between the world's two largest economies.

A trade war is a possibility. Let's watch the Chinese call in their debt. The lets see how the US businesses react to having a 40% tariff slapped on their Chinese made products. Will be fun.


Peter Lemkin Wrote:There's something heartbreaking about the prospect that America's next commander in chief may be a global joke, a man regarded in most foreign capitals as a buffoon, and a dangerous one.
Did Kristof sleep through the Bush presidency?


Peter Lemkin Wrote:Trump is not particularly ideological, and it's possible that as president he would surround himself with experts and would back off extreme positions. It was a good sign that on Friday he appeared to reverse himself and pledged that he would not order the U.S. military to commit war crimes, yet that's such an astonishingly low bar that I can't believe I just wrote this sentence!
Trump sounds positively enlightened then compared to what we have had for the last few decades.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:In any case, Trump is nothing if not unpredictable, and it seems equally plausible that he would start new wars. It's a risk that few sensible people want to take.
This is the issue. He is not their idiot. He is certainly no more 'dangerous' than Obama or Bush or Clinton but he isn't (yet) owned by any of TPTB and the uncertainty is bad for their investments.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:As Mitt Romney notes, "This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss."
"Why, at a moment when the country desperately needs our A-team, would we send in the clowns?"

Is political discourse so bad in the US that they are taking seriously the advice of a man who believes in magic underpants? In any case the clowns have long been in the White House.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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