Regarding Generals

Specifically Mike Flynn (Sr.)

On issues of national security and intelligence, no one is likely to have more influence in Donald Trump’s White House than retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn.

Yet Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, has gained prominence in Republican politics by fueling conspiracy theories and Islamophobic rhetoric that critics warn could create serious distractions — or alienate allies and embolden enemies — if it continues.

  WaPo

There's those "distractions" again. Perhaps we now see where Flynn Jr. gets his tendencies for distraction with "fake news".

Julianne Smith, a former deputy national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden [...] said she was “deeply troubled” by a Flynn tendency to promote fake news stories on his Twitter feed.

[...]

The issue of sharing fake news was highlighted when Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn, tweeted about the false idea that prompted a shooting at a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor. He had been promoting a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton’s allies had been operating a secret pedophilia ring in the restaurant and noted it would remain a story until “proven to be false.”

Like father, like son.

[Smith] was among several national security experts who raised concerns Tuesday about Flynn’s willingness to share bad intelligence on a social media feed as he prepares to move to the West Wing.

Sounds like a perfect match with Trump, though.

"Whoever has the president’s ear on international affairs, Nichols said, should have “a firm grip on what’s true and what’s false.”

[...]

Less than a week before the election, the elder Flynn tweeted a link to a story that falsely claimed Clinton emails contained proof of money laundering and sex crimes with children, among other illegal activities. The incoming national security adviser called the baseless story a “must read” and instructed his followers: “U decide.”

Flynn also promoted conspiracy theorists, some of them white supremacists, throughout the campaign even as he emerged as Trump’s highest profile national security adviser.

[...]

Flynn’s appointment is not subject to Senate confirmation.

“I have grave concerns about Flynn for a whole variety of reasons,” said [Sen. Tim] Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the former Democratic vice-presidential nominee. “He’s either so gullible to accept things that even a fourth-grader wouldn’t accept or he’s so consumed with malice that that overrides what should be a natural incredulity.”

[...]

Flynn has pushed fabricated or dubious stories on Twitter at least 16 times since August, according to a tally by Politico. Stories that have appeared on Flynn’s Twitter feed have included accusations that Hillary Clinton is involved in a child sex-trafficking ring, that she has waged a secret war on the Catholic Church, that Obama is a jihadi and that is a secret United Nations plot to take over the world called “Agenda 21.”

  WaPo

But wait. That's not all.

Days after Islamist militants stormed the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn reached a conclusion that stunned some of his subordinates at the Defense Intelligence Agency: Iran had a role in the attack, he told them.

Now, he added, it was their job to prove it — and, by implication, to show that the White House was wrong about what had led to the attack.

[...]

[Flynn's] stubborn insistence reminded some officials at the agency of how the Bush administration had once relentlessly sought to connect Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

[...]

He has posted on Twitter that fear of Muslims is rational, written that Islamic law is spreading in the United States, and said that Islam itself is more like a political ideology than a religion.

[...]

Many of those who observed the general’s [brief tenure running the Defense Intelligence Agency] described him as someone who alienated both superiors and subordinates with his sharp temperament, his refusal to brook dissent, and what his critics considered a conspiratorial worldview.

[...]

During a tense gathering of senior officials at an off-site retreat, [...] Mr. Flynn said that the first thing everyone needed to know was that he was always right. His staff would know they were right, he said, when their views melded to his.

[...]

Those qualities could prove problematic for a national security adviser especially one who will have to mediate the conflicting views of cabinet secretaries and agencies for a president with no experience in defense or foreign policy issues.

  NYT

Well, more accurately, for the country and the world.

More problematic from the military’s perspective was Mr. Flynn’s willingness to share intelligence with other countries. He returned to Washington at the end of 2010, and found himself under investigation for sharing sensitive data with Pakistan about the Haqqani network, arguably the most capable faction of the Taliban, and for providing highly classified intelligence to British and Australian forces fighting in Afghanistan.

Okay, that's probably not good.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.