Donald Trump named former CIA director and extremist neoconservative James Woolsey his senior adviser on national security issues on Monday. Woolsey, who left the CIA in 1995, went on to become one of Washington’s most outspoken promoters of U.S. war in Iraq and the Middle East.
As such, Woolsey’s selection either clashes with Trump’s noninterventionist rhetoric — or represents a pivot towards a more muscular, neoconservative approach to resolving international conflicts.
Trump has called the Iraq War “a disaster.”
Woolsey, by contrast, was a key member of the Project for the New American Century — a neoconservative think tank largely founded to encourage a second war with Iraq. Woolsey signed a letter in 1998 calling on Clinton to depose Saddam Hussein and only hours after the 9/11 attacks appeared on CNN and blamed the attacks on Iraq. Woolsey has continued to insist on such a connection despite the complete lack of evidence to support his argument. He also blames Iran.
Weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Woolsey called for broader war in the Middle East, saying “World War IV” was already underway.
Woolsey has also put himself in a position to profit from the wars he has promoted. He has served as vice president of Pentagon contracting giant Booz Allen, and as chairman of Paladin Capital Group, a private equity fund that invests in national security and cybersecurity.
He chairs the leadership council at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a hawkish national security nonprofit, and is a venture partner with Lux Capital Management, which invests in emerging technologies like drones, satellite imaging, and artificial intelligence.
Woolsey went on CNN on Monday and said that he was principally motivated to support Trump because of his plans to expand U.S. military spending.
Trump gave a speech last week in which he proposed dramatic expansions of the Army and Marines, and hundred-billion-dollar weapons systems for the Navy and Air Force. He offered no justification — aside from citing a few officials who claimed they wanted more firepower.
Woolsey stood by Trump’s proposal on Monday.
“I think the problem is her budget,” Woolsey said of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. “She is spending so much money on domestic programs — including ones that we don’t even have now, and the ones we have now are underfunded — I think there can be very little room for the improvements in defense and intelligence that have to be made.”
Woolsey has previously called for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted.”
In the past, Woolsey has publicly disagreed with Trump on a number of national security issues — including Trump’s plan to ban Muslim immigration. On Monday, Woolsey told CNN that such a plan would raise First Amendment issues, but that he supported a temporary immigration block from certain Muslim countries.
Thus far, at least, most prominent war hawks have found they had more in common with Clinton than Trump. “I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump,” leading neoconservative Robert Kagan told a group in July.
Top photo: James Woolsey on Capitol Hill in 2007.
Oh no! US libertarians fooled again!
They’ll get it right the next time.
Oh no! The fix is in. I’m sorry I sent Trump money. I am wondering if Pat Buchanan will say anything about this latest, revolting turn of developments with his favorite candidate, Trump.
The U.S. is doomed.
OMG!
Another instance where a corporate slob’s words
do not align with their actions!
Whenever anyone bases their evaluations of democrats and
republicans on the words they have used, my reaction is a mix
of disbelief, feelings of futility, and a rolling of the eyes.
Trump and Clinton represent two sides of the same poisonous coin,
but we are told repeatedly,
to listen to the clinking sounds each side makes and try to decide
which side rings true.
Trump wants to go on the offensive against ISIS and Woolsey is precisely the kind of person he would need to advise him how to set it up. But I see no reason to question Trump’s desire to establish good relations with Russia; that’s why neoconservatives hate Trump and support war-hawk Putin-hating Clinton.
Trump shows a kind of independence of neoconservative dogma that Clinton shows none of. I think it’s only fair to grant him that.
I also wonder if Trump would follow up his ISIS war with an occupation. He says he would not. If so, then after a US Blitzkrieg, he would pull out the troops and hand over to locals without attempting nation building.
In fact, Trump would probably want to get the US out of the business of nation building altogether. War yes, rebuilding no. It’s a vicious policy, but Clinton’s is probably even worse. So, on foreign policy, I think it’s a no-brainer: as horrible as Trump is, Clinton is horribler.
Since I could never vote for a neoconservative, I’m voting for Stein.
Trump doesn’t care about policy. He only cares about money. And that’s why he’s putting war profiteers in his national security advisors. How can we make money off of this conflict?
Eid Mubarrack to all the Moderate Islamic Jihadists Friends, and hope they will pass on this goodwill to all their misguided friends and relatives who have been unnecessarily plotting to harm everybody on the planet.
So, let’s see, in the American election you can’t vote for:
Peace
Equality
Human rights
The environment
You can vote for the hope of eventually, sometime this century, being allowed to vote for:
Education
Health care (the universal, cost effective kind)
Gun control
Racial equality
Perhaps that is why so many Americans don’t bother (and why American election campaigns are so long. After all, it takes time and a lot of advertising to get someone to care that Brand A’s super sweet, witches brew of chemicals (aka cola) has just a hair less of a bad aftertaste than Brand B’s version.
(Don’t drink any cola for several months, then take a swig, you’ll wonder how you could possibly have stomached drinking the stuff…at least until you’ve drunk a quart or two, at which point the same process that makes smokers not smell the reek will kick in, and you’ll look blankly at someone who asks you how you tolerate the aftertaste)
Actually, in 45 states voters CAN vote for peace, equality, human rights, and the environment. They can vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
http://www.jill2016.com
45? Wow! I’m impressed with the Greens. The Libertarians just gained access to the Rhode Island ballot so they’re now on all 50 plus DC. That Evan McMullin guy is on the ballot in nine states.
Ex-CIA Director Woolsey Makes Ass of Self
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/11/ex-cia-director-woolsey-makes-ass-of-self/
[“Last week it was reported that former CIA Director James Woolsey, forced to resign during the Clinton administration for his bungling of the Aldrich Ames affair, was going around telling people that the reason Jonathan Pollard, the notorious Israeli spy, was still in prison after 29 years is because the U.S. government is anti-Semitic. In short, Pollard remains in prison because he’s a Jew.
That has got to be one of the silliest statements of the new year. If Woolsey honestly believes the U.S. government is anti-Semitic, that it is driven by anti-Jewish sentiments, he needs to explain why the U.S. has generously made Israel, the spiritual and geographical homeland of the Jewish people, a virtual client-state, having given/lent/made available billions upon billions of dollars over the years.
Consider those other spies. Aldrich Ames, formerly of the CIA, and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the FBI, are both serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for having supplied the Soviet Union with U.S. state secrets. John Walker, formerly of U.S. Naval intelligence, is set to be released in 2015, after having served 30 years in prison for selling secrets to the Soviets. None of the three are Jewish…”]
Zion speaks out the *ss…
Woolsey did an interview with Harper Simon on The Lip TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fbS3ofWd_g
[“Woolsey has previously called for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted.””]
So says the liar scumbag whose criminality is on record…POS with pools of blood on his hands. Remarkable coming from a coward that doesn’t have a hand on Putin.
I call for the assassination of Woolsey and end his criminal career.
Trump…the con
http://aanirfan.blogspot.com/2016/09/trump-and-dame-of-malta.html
Donald Trump’s Top Foreign Adviser, Joseph Schmitz, is a Former Blackwater Executive
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/25/donald_trumps_top_foreign_adviser_joseph
“The Making of Donald Trump”: David Cay Johnston on Trump’s Ties to the Mob & Drug Traffickers
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/5/the_making_of_donald_trump_david
Let’s see the Clintons triangulate themselves out of this one.
Trump drifts ever so slowly towards the Neocons. Hellary is already there.
It disappoints me Trump associates with Woolsey and Guilianai. He seems to be abandoning his outsider roots.
Who else is there realistically to vote for? Maybe Biden with Ron Paul as VP?
Biden and Paul are current on the ballot in 0 states. The Green Party’s Jill Stein is on the ballot in 45, and a write-in in three more. 2+2=4. QED
http://www.jill2016.com
General Woolsey is a top-order bloodhound. He really doesn’t have any personal opinion, and this is by training and discipline. Like a bloodhound he does what his master wants him to do. So there is really no point saying Woolsey is this or he is that. He will be what we want him to be, and proud to be The Deplorables.
Sorry, but ya made me laugh at the bloodhound analogy. As someone who had bloodhounds for 17 years, lemme tell you that those hounds pretty much do what THEY want. And Woolsey wouldn’t make a pimple on a bloodhound’s ass.
Are you kidding? See Steve Coll in Ghost Wars on the James Woolsey phenomenon:
Funny, did you know that Carter, that liberal humanitarian, sold more arms to the Shah of Iran than Nixon or Ford did? That’s your American liberal in action; just as Obama sold more arms to the Saudis than Bush did. Of course, Woolsey was happy to get in bed with the Bush crime family after the Clintons dropped him in 1995.
And as far as all of Trump’s rhetoric on how free trade deals hurt the United States?
Trump is changing his tune on that too, it seems. And what about Woolsey and the Saudis?
Basically, the same pro-Saudi mentality that Bush, Clinton and Obama share. Woolsey finally got the boot over the Aldrich Ames Soviet spying scandal broke in 1995, when someone had to take the fall for it.
Looks like Trump has gone and changed his coat again. Doubt he’ll be building that wall you were so thrilled about, either. How does it feel to be played like a sucker? Don’t feel too bad, all the Obama supporters in 2008 felt the same way by 2010. Our politicians specialize in the bait-and-switch approach.
That evil clown is now in bed with Trump? Gosh, looks like the neocons have split the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1360627/Building-the-case-against-Iraq.html
What a disaster that was; what it means is Woolsey was recruiting Chalabi to be the puppet in the planned Iraqi client regime that was supposed to hand control of Iraqi oil over to U.S. majors under the terms of a neocolonial oil law (the Paul Bremer agenda), probably in coordination with that other war criminal, Tony Blair.
James Woolsey was also CIA Director at the time that the CIA began running a covert “biological threat assessment program” called Clear Vision, aimed at replicating a Soviet anthrax bomblet, making him a prime suspect in terms of the source of the anthrax used in the 9/18 and 10/9 attacks. Fantastic.
If that’s the case, then it’s clear that Trump and Clinton are equally dangerous on foreign policy issues; both will be gearing up for more foreign military adventures with disastrous consequences for the American public and the world at large.
Including a Yosemite Sam like extreme voice in his advisors may be a wise choice because these are the people he will face as he tries to modify US FP. If he can tame and redirect this madman his stated goals will be easier to accomplish and I doubt he will follow Woolsey but attempt to lead him and his ilk. And who knows maybe Woolsey is taking better meds now and has some rational ideas about security.
Lest there be any doubt, Woolsey is an idiot.
This is what concerns me more than Trump’s apparent willingness to abandon bipartisan consensus on the New Cold War. Woolsey not only blamed 9/11 on Iraq (a claim ludicrous at best), but also the Oklahoma City Bombing. And saying that Iran was working with Iraq? That displays blatant ignorance or blatant lying- neither of which make him look good.