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Friedman: Mike Pompeo Is the Worst Secretary of State Ever

If you thought the volume on the Trump-Twitter-Fox noise distraction machine was turned up extra loud in the past few weeks, it was not only to deflect attention from the nearly 100,000 Americans who’ve died from Covid-19, but also from the confirmation that on President Trump’s watch our country suffered the first deadly terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 that was planned abroad.

You read that right. Last week, Attorney General William Barr and the F.B.I. said that data from cellphones of a Saudi Air Force trainee who killed three U.S. sailors and wounded eight others at a Navy air base in Pensacola, Fla., on Dec. 6 confirmed that it was an act of foreign-planned “terrorism.”

The phone data “definitively establishes” that the trainee, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, had “significant ties to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — not only before the attack, but before he even arrived in the United States” in August 2017. He had actually joined the Saudi military to carry out a “special operation.”

That Alshamrani was able to kill three sailors at an American base was a massive failure of U.S. and Saudi intelligence. I mean, who should be getting more scrutinized before they come train in the U.S. on an air base than Saudi pilots?

The Trump administration clearly had no idea what was happening under its nose.

As The Washington Post noted: After the attack, investigators found evidence that 17 fellow Saudi students “had shared Islamist militant or anti-American material on social media, and others had possessed or shared child pornography. As a result, 21 cadets from Saudi Arabia were disenrolled from the training program and sent home.”

That sort of intelligence failure — the first foreign-planned terrorist attack on U.S. shores since 9/11 — is something you’d expect Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to be particularly upset about. After all, it was Pompeo, when he was in Congress, who spearheaded the investigations into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s supposed responsibility for the death of four U.S. diplomats in a terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

Oh, you forgot about Congressman Pompeo’s endless campaign to nail Hillary with Benghazi? Well, let me jog your memory. Here is how The Guardian described the conclusion of the 800-page, House select committee investigation on Benghazi, led by a Republican representative, Trey Gowdy, and issued on July 28, 2016:

It “found no new evidence to conclude that Hillary Clinton, secretary of state at the time, was culpable in the deaths.” A few hours later, the Obama White House “noted tersely that this was the eighth congressional committee to investigate the attacks and went on longer than the 9/11 commission and the committees designated to look at Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President John F Kennedy, the Iran-contra affair and Watergate.”

So, let’s do some math here: Then-Congressman Pompeo led the utterly contrived campaign to blame Hillary for the Benghazi deaths — a charge that a Republican-led committee found to be without merit. But Pompeo used his crusade to gain the attention, via Fox News, of Trump and was named Trump’s C.I.A. director. And now we learn that while Pompeo was C.I.A. director, the first foreign-planned terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 was being organized here and abroad, and while he was secretary of state it was carried out.

Now that’s something worth investigating.

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by Anonymousreply 10June 5, 2020 11:57 AM

Not as long as I'm alive, baby.

by Anonymousreply 1May 27, 2020 4:16 PM

He's just another in Trump's line of asskissers.

He wants to run for president soon and is hoping for Trump's followers.

by Anonymousreply 2May 27, 2020 6:41 PM

So much shit is going on that we can’t hear about due to all the noise from Trump’s constant barrage of distractions.

by Anonymousreply 3May 27, 2020 6:47 PM

[quote]Friedman: Mike Pompeo Is the Worst Secretary of State Ever

It's Executive Assistant now, Dear.

by Anonymousreply 4May 27, 2020 7:06 PM

Worst Sec of State ever in the worst administration ever for the worst US "president" ever. The entire shit show is a con from top to bottom.

No disrespect intended to tops and bottoms.

by Anonymousreply 5May 27, 2020 7:53 PM

[QUOTE] Mike Pompeo put together an undisclosed board of outside advisers while he was director of CIA that some at the agency viewed as inappropriately weighted toward wealthy individuals and well-connected political figures, according to four current and former officials.

[QUOTE]The advisers were often treated to elaborate multiday experiences that included “lavish” dinners, classified briefings, and at least one trip to the CIA’s secret training facilities, the sources said.

[QUOTE] “These were designed vanity experiences for the attendees, clearly designed to expand Pompeo’s network at government expense and under the rubric of a formal body,” said one former official. “They were not substantive and were solely designed to advance Pompeo’s potential funding and political network.” Pompeo’s wife, Susan, who is not a government official, was also involved in planning the events, according to three former officials.

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by Anonymousreply 6May 27, 2020 9:00 PM

Who weighs more- Trump or Pompeo?

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by Anonymousreply 7June 5, 2020 3:36 AM

Together plus Barr equals the mass of a black hole, r7.

And just as dark.

by Anonymousreply 8June 5, 2020 3:47 AM

An Italian American produce distributor with ties to the mob.

by Anonymousreply 9June 5, 2020 4:31 AM

And Tom Friedman is a major authority on things "Worst Ever".

by Anonymousreply 10June 5, 2020 11:57 AM
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