Pompeo laying mines in final days of office: Canadian journalist

BEIJING - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, among "defeated armies" who are retreating, has been laying mines in foreign policy before time is called on his "ideologically driven term", a Canadian independent journalist wrote recently.

"The mines slow pursuit, they may inflict casualties on the victors, and they give the losers something purposeful to do amid panic and despair," said Gwynne Dyer in an opinion piece published Friday on Hamilton Spectator, a Canadian news outlet.

The article came as Pompeo had taken a series of diplomatic moves in his final days in office, including lifting restrictions on official contacts with China's Taiwan region, designating Yemen's Houthi rebels as a foreign terrorist organization, putting Cuba back on the list of "state sponsor of terrorism," and calling Iran currently the main home of the Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda.

Pompeo, with his "scorched-earth" policy, is "setting slow-burning fires in plain sight", and "a European foreign minister recently described him as a 'political pyromaniac'", the writer said.