© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
Flynn was repeatedly assigned to senior intelligence posts in Afghanistan and Iraq after 2001, before taking overall control of US military intelligence in 2012. The German newspaper Bild is now serializing a book detailing his experiences of the War on Terror.
"We looked a ruthless enemy in the eye, the one that raped and exploited women and children, boys and girls, who beheaded people because it pleased him and who watched pornography on his laptop," writes Flynn, who retired in 2014.
"At one point we actually had determined that the material on the laptops was up to 80 per cent pornography. These sick, psychopathic enemies were not only unimaginably hideous, but also treacherous and torn."
Comment: Flynn is an interesting character. He was DIA chief when the infamous 2012 memo was produced, the one outlining that an Islamic State was inevitable, and that it was what the U.S. and its allies wanted in Iraq and Syria. His warnings were deliberately ignored, and he was essentially forced out of his position. But ironically, his Islamophobia seems to have made him actually serious about fighting terrorism (the dangers of his views to the wider Muslim community notwithstanding). So this put him in conflict with the neocon breed of the Washington elite who have no problem creating and maintaining terror groups like Daesh to suit their purposes.