Action Alert: Say NO to Trump’s War Cabinet!
Initiated by the MN Anti-War Committee * March 26, 2018
In the past week Trump has surrounded himself with hawks who are determined to attack Iran and North Korea.
Trump has picked John Bolton to be the new National Security Advisor. Commondreams explains the danger he poses, “John Bolton helped lie our country into an illegal war of aggression that killed several hundred thousand Iraqis, wounded over a million, and displaced 4 million from their homes… and helped create ISIL, which blew up Paris. In a just world, Bolton would be on trial at the Hague for war crimes. Instead, he has been promoted into a position to do to Iran what he did to Iraq.” Unfortunately Bolton does not need Senate approval but others in Trump’s War Cabinet do.
Trump has nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who is a close ally of the Koch brothers, to be the new Secretary of State. This would be a disaster for U.S. foreign relations with Iran and North Korea. Pompeo’s hawkish attitudes towards both countries would make it doubtful diplomacy with either country would go anywhere and he would increase the chances of nuclear war with both countries! Additionally, The Atlantic reported, “Pompeo embraces anti-Muslim bigots, and defames Muslims, with almost as much gusto as Trump himself.” His racist beliefs on Muslims uniquely disqualify him as top diplomat for the U.S.
Gina Haspel, the CIA’s current deputy director, has been nominated by Trump for the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. We strongly oppose her nomination too. Haspel was directly involved in the CIA’s torture program and Fortune reports “A 2017 New York Times report says Haspel, in 2002, oversaw the torture of two suspects at a secret prison in Thailand and later was involved in the destruction of videotapes documenting that torture. One of those prisoners was waterboarded 83 times in a single month, had his head repeatedly slammed into walls, and endured other harsh methods before interrogators decided he had no useful information to provide, says the Times. As a result of such torture, she was shifted out of her role as head of the CIA’s clandestine service.”
New York Times explains, “The last time there was this conservative a clique around the president was 15 years ago, when Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pressed President George W. Bush to invade Iraq.”
The Anti-War Committee calls on Minnesotans to call on both MN senators to vote NO to both Pompeo and Haspel and to use their voice in the Senate to stop them from taking office! We say NO to war with Iran and North Korea!
- Senator Tina Smith * 202-224-5641
- Senator Amy Klobuchar * 202-224-5641