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| Home Front: Politix |
| Former Defense Intel Chief Blasts Obama |
| 2015-01-28 |
| Lt. General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, blasted the Obama administration’s approach to the War on Terror in a hard-hitting speech to a meeting of intelligence professionals. “The dangers to the U.S. do not arise from the arrogance of American power, but from unpreparedness or an excessive unwillingness to fight when fighting is necessary,” Flynn said, in an unsparing critique first reported by the Daily Beast. Flynn left government last summer, a year before scheduled. He did not provide a reason for his early departure, but sources close to Flynn told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that he was forced out after years of making arguments the Obama administration did not want to hear. Flynn, and many of the analysts who worked for him, consistently reported on the global nature of the jihadist threat and the interconnectedness of the groups driving it. They mapped overlapping networks of al Qaeda and its offshoots and rejected arguments, pushed primarily by the White House and the CIA, that killing leaders of “core al Qaeda” inevitably meant a diminishing threat. One key fight came over the analysis of the documents captured during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The CIA was responsible for the first scrub of the collection of more than 1 million documents and retained “executive authority” over the cache when it was completed. But the CIA stopped analyzing or “exploiting” the documents after that first quick and incomplete assessment and the Agency made no attempt to systematically examine and codify all of the intelligence included in the intelligence haul. “A full exploitation? No. Not even close. Maybe 10 percent,” he said. The Obama administration is choosing ignorance. The arguments that Flynn and his analysts were making were unwelcome in an administration publicly arguing that the threat was diminished and that the wars were over. Those who challenged the administration’s claims were sidelined or, in the case of Flynn, forced out. Several sources described the efforts at the time as a “purge” and warned about the dangers of an administration so unwilling to hear dissenting views. Today, of course, there is little question that Flynn and his analysts were correct. But the Obama administration isn’t listening. The president gave a State of the Union last week in which he didn’t even mention al Qaeda, in which he awkwardly characterized the enemy as “violent extremists,” and in which he pretended that United States was winning the battle against ISIS. Ignoring threats doesn’t make them go away. Refusing to accurately identify your enemies doesn’t change their nature. And announcing false victories makes real defeats more likely. As Flynn put it: “Retreat, retrenchment and disarmament are historically a recipe for disaster.” |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #2 FYI SEE TOPIX > [American Thinker] AS CHINA PLANS FOR WAR, THE US RENAMES ITS BATTLE PLAN, i.e. from "AirSea Battle" to "Joint Mobility Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons". IIUC, East Asia-Pacific or Asia-Pacific includng GUAM-WESTPAC is now a "Global Commons" - IFF "GLOBAL COMMONS" IS NOT A OWG-NWO-ESQUE, UPPITY SECULAR INTELLECTUALIST LIBERAL-PROGRESSIVE MARXIST-GLOBALIST, ....@ETC. LABEL I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS. Whose for Tea-n-Biscuits [Cookies] in the Space/Star Garden??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2015-01-28 22:06 |
| #1 Should he be looking for a Food Taster? |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2015-01-28 21:54 |