Trump’s new foreign policy adviser has militia ties
[su_center_b]
Walid Phares is now a Trump “counter-terrorism expert.”
Adam Serwer reported back in 2011, when Phares signed on as an adviser to Mitt Romney, that Phares “was a high ranking political official in a sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon’s brutal, 15-year civil war” and worked as “a close adviser to Samir Geagea, a Lebanese warlord.”
In 1978, the Lebanese Forces emerged as the umbrella group of the assorted Christian militias. According to former colleagues, Phares became one of the group’s chief ideologists, working closely with the Lebanese Forces’ Fifth Bureau, a unit that specialized in psychological warfare.
That ideology, some experts say, helped rationalize the indiscriminate sectarian violence that characterized the conflict. “There were lots of horrendous, horrendous atrocities that took place during that civil war, in part fueled by that fairly hateful ideology,” says a former State Department official and Middle East expert.
[su_google_b_b]
[su_facebook]
