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Michele Flournoy: A Clinton Administration’s Likely Secretary of War
By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, June 22, 2016

Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/michele-flournoy-a-clinton-administrations-likely-secretary-of-war/5532278

America’s Defense Department is misnamed. Its designation sanitizes its warmaking mission – endless aggression against nonbelligerent states.

The endgame is clear – unchallenged US global dominance.

Flournoy is scary, cut out of the same dangerous cloth as Clinton, reportedly her choice to head her administration’s killing machine if elected president in November.

She’s a former third-ranking Department of War official, its highest-ranking woman, co-founder of the neocon Center for a New American Security (CNAS) – promoting phony war on terror, endless wars on the pretext of protecting US interests and values.

Earlier she served in the Bill Clinton administration’s War Department, focusing on strategy, requirements, plans and counterproliferation, as well as Russia, Ukraine and Eurasian affairs.

She’s a former National Defense University research professor, heading its Quadrennial Defense Review, as well as a Center for Strategic and International Studies defense (sic) policy and international security senior advisor.

Her current affiliations besides CNAS include serving as:

  • senior advisor on government projects for the Boston Consulting Group;
  • senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs;
  • a hawkish neocon Atlantic Council board member;
  • a right-wing Aspen Strategy Group member;
  • the CIA’s External Advisory Board; and
  • a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member – historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1922 – 2007) once calling it a “front organization (for) the heart of the American Establishment.”

Flournoy reportedly called for “limited military coercion,” including designating parts of Syria held by US-supported terrorists “no bombing” zones.

She supports deploying larger numbers of US combat troops to Syria on the phony pretext of combatting ISIS. On June 16, a CNAS report urged “go(ing) beyond the current cessation of hostilities” – pressuring Russia and Syria not to attack terrorist groups Washington calls moderates.

If targeting them continues, the report called for US forces retaliating against Assad, striking Syrian operating bases and “security apparatus facilities in Damascus,” not  areas where Russia’s military is based.

Flournoy urges ousting Assad forcibly, turning Syria into another US vassal state, with similar designs on Iran. Interviewed by London’s Guardian in May, she praised Clinton, saying “her record as secretary of state suggests that she understands the importance of American leadership in the world…”

She “support(s) a smart approach to US engagement as the best way to protect our interests and also underwrite the global order.”

Flournoy is a warrior, favoring military solutions over diplomatic ones. America’s War Department in a Clinton administration could launch WW III.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”  http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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