President-elect Donald Trump has picked retired Marine General James Mattis as his defence secretary.
Mattis is known to be a vocal critic of the Obama administration for having inked the nuclear deal with Iran.
“We are going to appoint Mad Dog Mattis as our secretary of defence,” Trump told a rally in Cincinnati. “Mad dog. He’s great. He is great,” he added. He said the formal announcement would be made on Monday.
Trump also described Mattis as "a true general's general."
In 2005, CNN reported him as saying:
Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling. You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil.You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.
Despite his ‘brawls’ the ‘Mad Dog’ is a revered figure in the Marine Corps and is well respected even in the Pentagon. He led an assault battalion during the Gulf War in 1991 and in 2003 during the United State’s invasion of Iraq.
Due to his blunt assessment of the White House strategies regarding its Iran policy, he was removed from his final post in the military by the Obama administration, Vox reported.
The choice of a seasoned military strategist would be another indication that Trump, a Republican, intends to steer US foreign policy away from Democratic President Barack Obama's increased reliance on US allies to fight Islamist militants and to help deter Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia.
However, one hurdle still remains. Because he retired only in 2013, Mattis would need the US Congress to waive a requirement that a defence secretary be a civilian for at least seven years before taking the top job at the Pentagon. His impressive combat record, however, may deter some Senate Democrats from trying to block his nomination.
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