Mike Flynn Invokes OUR Anthrax and Calls Them the Terrorists

In an interview to mark his departure from the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Mike Flynn talks about the increased threats facing the United States.

Here’s one:

For instance, we’re doing all we can to understand the outflow of foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq, many of them with Western passports, because another threat I’ve warned about is Islamic terrorists in Syria acquiring chemical or biological weapons. We know they are trying to get their hands on chemical weapons and use what they already have to create a chemical weapons capability.

Remember anthrax was used in 2001 [killing five people] and pretty much paralyzed Capitol Hill. If that anthrax had been dispersed more efficiently, it could have killed a quarter million people.

That is, Flynn points to an anthrax terror attack officially blamed on a defense lab employee, not actually solved convincingly at all, but almost certainly carried out by a US government employee or contractor, and says that’s proof terrorists are more dangerous than they used to be.

And he does so to make sure we’re scared. He uses political violence to make sure we treat what is admittedly expanding crises as war.

But he says the mindset of jihadists fighting perpetual wars is something the US cannot understand.

JK: You also said recently that terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden represent the leadership of al-Qaeda, but that “core al-Qaeda” is its ideology of perpetual jihad.

Flynn: Yes, and unfortunately the core ideology and belief system is spreading, not shrinking. Look at the unbelievably violent videos [of beheadings, executions and the destruction of religious places] coming out of Iraq just in recent days. I’ve physically interrogated some of these guys, and I’ve had the opportunity to hear them talking about their organizations and beliefs. These are people who have a very deeply-rooted belief system that is just difficult for Americans to comprehend. Just think about the mindset of a suicide bomber.

Nowhere besides America’s domestic anthrax attacker does Flynn mention our own actions, not even in his discussion of Ukraine — unless you count extremist adaptation to our attacks.

JK: When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria routed the Iraqi Army recently, the terrorists also appeared to have become much better organized, disciplined and led.

Flynn: These various groups have learned from fighting the U.S. military for a decade, and they have created adaptive organizations as a means to survive.

Which Flynn immediately follows with this observation about how crafty those Islamic extremists are:

They write about and share ‘Lessons Learned’ all the time. That was something Bin Laden taught them before he died. 

Those crafty terrorists. Actually learning lessons!

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9 replies
  1. orionATL says:

    what the quote from flynn brings into question, the only thing it brings into question, is general flynn’s fitness to serve.

    the american military did not used to be full of deceitful nicompoops like flynn. what has happened in the recruitment and training at the military acadamies?

    as for “we’re doing all we can to understand the flow of passports…”, what a whining comment.

    the defense intelligence agancy didn’t by chance get caught with their pants down about isis and its explosive expansion into iraq, did they?

    while flynn was busy concocting ennuendos and lies about edward snowden to sew among the media, isis was preparing to boil out of syria.

    come to think of it, the entire u.s. intellingence behemoth did not seem to know what isis was up to, at least there were no public warnings.

    dolts,bureaucratic dolts.

  2. RUKidding says:

    When has USA! USA! USA! “won” any War/conflict since WWII (and it’s very arguable about whether USA “won” WWII; it was a collaborative effort)???

    A commenter on another blog stated that FDR & Eisenhower allegedly (I’m not sure & I’m paraphrasing from my admittedly faulty memory, so bags of salt recommended) regularly fired incompetent Generals. Gen Petraeus was fired for boinking his biographer, but how often do we see any of the recent Admins firing any Top Brass?

    And yet, from where I sit, the Military looks more & more & more incompetent. And the Surveillance State seems so overly focused on spying on US citizens at all costs that any “real” Intel about our alleged “enemies” seems out of their grasp or interest.

    Our tax dollar$ “at work.”

    • TarheelDem says:

      General Petraeus was fired because he kept making excuses about why he could not deliver the goods that he promised in 2009. Boinking his biographer made the PR surrounding his firing a lot easier. Petraeus was demoted because of McChrystal’s insubordination and told to do McChrystal’s job. He failed and blamed it on intelligence. He was moved to CIA to deal with the intelligence failures that were his excuse. He stirred up some folks who nailed him with a honeypot.

      The fact is that he was making excuses about his performance there. Petraeus was all hat and not cattle but with great institutional and PR connections.

      interesting that yet another incompetent is leaving and muttering Bushism on the way out.

  3. TarheelDem says:

    Another example of why the US would be better served by repealing the Truman-era legislation that established this zoo of incompetence.

  4. ArizonaBumblebeeper says:

    Like most of the readers on this site, I don’t take at face value anything the spokesmen for the Obama Administration have to say. The national security ( or deep) state is either out of control or under the control of nefarious forces willing to do and say anything to achieve their goals. The constant lies, misinformation, smears, and obfuscation are unparalleled in recent history. If you listen to what they keep telling us, you would believe that millions of innocent Americans and Europeans are being targeted by a bunch of crazies in the Arab world simply because they detest our way of living and want to destroy it in the name of Allah. This is sheer rubbish, and they know it. President Obama decided to intervene in norther Iraq because Israel’s number one ally in the region is Kurdistan, and Kurdistan is also our counterweight to Iranian influence in Baghdad. From Ukraine to Iraq to those tiny islands off the coast of China, this administration is pursuing an aggressive imperialistic foreign policy. God help us if they miscalculate because that could lead to a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The hope and change administration of President Obama has become a monster. The question that looms in the background for me is whether this was his plan all along.

  5. P J Evans says:

    The only lessons that the US military-intelligence complex seems to have learned over the last 60 years are in lying, cheating, and stealing.

  6. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Mr. Flynn’s lack of self-knowledge is startling. A considerable amount of the world’s violence has been perpetrated or sponsored by his employer. Some of it pertained to legitimate self-defense. A great deal of it pertained to maintaining dominance and to facilitating resource extraction: keeping the third world chaotic and undeveloped makes it easier to extract profits and keep the first world developed. The histories of the Congo, Iran and Iraq, Indonesia and Central and South America abundantly attest to that. One way to make the world more peaceful would be to change the behavior of his government, a necessary condition, it seems, to persuade terrorists that they needn’t be terrorists.

  7. Bitter Angry Drunk says:

    Well in Flynn’s defense sending anthrax in the mail sounds like something a brown person would do.

    It’s also rich to defend our perpetual warmaking by claiming that our enemies are mindlessly driven by a desire for perpetual war.

    Worst part is I think most of these assholes truly believe the bullshit they’re spewing.

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