How and Why Tulsi Gabbard is Held to a Higher Standard
Part One - The Revolving Door, Operation Mocking Bird, and Syria
Before this election cycle, few Americans would recognize the name Tulsi Gabbard outside of her home state of Hawaii. Those who had most likely would have been closely following the 2016 election, as Gabbard began her gradual ascent to national name-recognition when she resigned as the vice chairman of the DNC, stepping down 4 months before the Democratic national convention in order to endorse Bernie Sanders for president, much to the dismay of the entire DNC establishment. This was a big deal because Gabbard was the fourth current member of Congress to endorse Sanders at the time - and the most high-profile.
It was a large leap of faith for the congresswoman to abandon her respectable position at the DNC in order to endorse the DNC-outcast at odds with Hillary Clinton and the DNC establishment. In doing this, she had shown herself to be one of the few people in Congress with courage and integrity, willing to risk her political career for her beliefs. NPR reported at the time that, “(She served in Iraq ... and cites her military experience as the impetus for her decision to back Sanders*.
As a veteran and as a soldier I've seen firsthand the true cost of war, ...
‘I think it's most important for us as we look at our choices as to who our next commander-in-chief will be ... to recognize the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment.’ ”
An email was sent to Tulsi, reprimanding her, the same night as the resignation, from a former Clinton foundation executive in conjunction with a major democratic fundraiser and forwarded to John Podesta - ultimately being made available to the public when Wikileaks released the “Podesta leaks”. It read,
We were very disappointed to hear that you would resign your position with the DNC so you could endorse Bernie Sanders, a man who has never been a Democrat before. ... For you to endorse a man who has spent almost 40 years in public office with very few accomplishments, doesn't fall in line with what we previously thought of you. Hillary Clinton will be our party's nominee and you standing on ceremony to support the sinking Bernie Sanders ship is disrespectful to Hillary Clinton. ...
Darnell Strom & Michael Kives
Just as Gabbard’s recognition of the need for a responsible commander-in-chief who is willing to fight the military-industrial complex, intelligence agencies, and general war machine served as the impetus for her decision to endorse Bernie Sanders, it would go on to be the foundation of her 2020 presidential bid and campaign.
Glenn Greenwald would write that, “Gabbard’s transformation from cherished party asset to party critic and outcast was rapid, and was due almost entirely to her insistence on following her own belief system and evolving ideology, rather than party dogma and the longstanding rules for Washington advancement”. Tulsi Gabbard's ability to deviate from the norm and go against the grain at risk to her career is a rare trait, hard enough to observe in the average industry, even more so on Capital Hill - making Gabbard stand out from the herd.
Tulsi’s first confirmation of her intention to run in 2020 came in an interview with CNN’s Van Jones, which aired on Jan 12th, where she announced her decision to run after Van Jones prompted “* Are you gonna run for President of the United States and do something about it?”.
“I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement within the next week.”* She would go on to elaborate that while she intends to take domestic policy very seriously, her campaign's central theme would be foreign policy,
"There are many reasons for me to make this decision. There are a lot of challenges the American people are facing, that I’m concerned about and I want to help solve. Issues related to making sure people who are sick get access to the healthcare they need, making sure that people who are stuck in our broken criminal justice system and the families that are torn apart are being helped, are being served--making sure we’re taking action to protect our planet for us and for the future.
There’s a whole host of issues that I’m looking forward to addressing.
But there’s one main issue that is central to the rest, and that is the issue of war and peace. I look forward to talking about this issue in depth when we make our formal announcement”
After Tulsi’s presidential campaign was initially announced during her appearance on CNN with Van Jones, a smear campaign was subsequently launched - almost like clockwork. CNN published a hit-piece the very next day which this series will cover in a later part. This article aims to partially address the context behind her presidential bid, how and why her coverage in the mainstream media is so poor, and then, and the Syria smear. The rest of the smears will be covered in later parts.
The Foreign Establishment and The Revolving Door
Tulsi being held to a higher standard than her peers, such as her fellow 2020 contender Joe Biden who is more "high-profile", is not an incidental fluke in coverage, but rather an observable result of a deliberate and tactical smear campaign by the mainstream media at the behest of the “foreign policy establishment”.
A common feature of political “smears” is that if you were to use the basis of the smear as a “purity test”, many of the politicians who find support from the person/people propagating the smears would fail said purity test. Furthermore, these smears often rely on an invalid angle of attack- even without comparisons. It is no secret Tulsi is at war with the entire war machine, from weapons manufacturers to the consent manufacturers.
The general war machine extends far beyond the defense contracting industry and intelligence community, stretching its tentacles into the media, academia, and both the RNC and DNC establishments. There are many ties between the defense industry, intelligence community, media and politicians that result in obvious conflicts of interest. Former CIA director, Mike Pompeo, is now the current secretary of state, the chief diplomat for interacting with other countries. Pompeo has been vehemently defending the assassination of Soleimani based off undisclosed intelligence. Politico recently published an article titled “Trump's Shadow Secretary of Defense” that reported,
"In recent days, one aide to President Donald Trump has blitzed the media to talk about troop deployments, deterrence and the likelihood of American bombs raining down on Iranian soil.
It’s not the man who leads the Pentagon.
Instead, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has seized the spotlight amid the escalating U.S. confrontation with Iran. As he’s done so, he’s come across to some observers as an unofficial secretary of defense, overshadowing the actual defense secretary.
Pompeo’s omnipresence illustrates the extraordinary influence he wields in Trump’s inner circle three years into the Republican president’s tenure.”
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment." https://t.co/PEvFhaKgn5 pic.twitter.com/UR5tUmmp3b
Robert De Niro ᵖᵃʳᵒᵈʸ (@RobertDeNiroUS) January 7, 2020
The Ron Paul Institute aptly reported in an article titled, “Pompeo: I Lied About Soleimani 'Imminent Attacks'” that “Trump's neoconservative Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is a man unafraid to admit to being a liar. In fact he seems to revel in his ability to lie to the American people." Do people really think as secretary of state, Pompeo has simply cut all connections he had with the CIA and changed his ways to become an honest man? You can take the spook out of the CIA, but you can't take the CIA out of the spook.
And what about our actual Secretary of Defense? Before our current Secretary of Defense joined the administration, Mark Esper was the Vice President of government relations for one of the World’s largest defense contractors, Raytheon corporation. Does Esper serve as a backchannel to Raytheon? Does Esper’s position represent an alignment of interests between the corporation, or general industry, and the DOD? Or has Esper abandoned his past life and cut his ties with the defense industry and ambitions for profit, turning from corporate executive to humble public servant? It is worth noting that defense stocks soared following Soleimani's assassination, continuing to rise after (predictable) retaliations on a US military base in Iraq.
Raytheon lobbyist in charge of USA military forces instructs Congress to not debate war.https://t.co/zqIxoMSUON
Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) January 10, 2020
This is a prime example of what many refer to as “the revolving door.” The defense (offense) industry utilizes it extensively to fulfill their corporate agenda. Let's face reality, no corporate industry puts profits over people more than the defense industry that encourages unnecessary wars and slaughter. Having defense industry corporate assets influence our government is a bigger national security threat than anything these former defense contractors and ex-spooks such as Esper and Pompeo are telling us to fear. Fearmongering and warmongering should be easier to identify in 2020, but much of the population is still susceptible to it due to a slim variety of news sources and little significant exposure to outside perspectives - although trust in the mainstream media is declining. Furthermore, nearly the entire field of mainstream journalism is embedded with intelligence community assets, whether the outlet is Fox news, CNN, or Newsweek.
When figures are observed maneuvering from positions such as Raytheon executive to secretary of defense, or from CIA operative to media personality at a major mainstream media outlet, it carries an implication of cooperation or association between the institutions the career-changer is switching between. Why was Esper, despite being a top Raytheon executive for 7 years, confirmed to be the head of the entire Department of Defense, the head of the Pentagon, “in a overwhelmingly bipartisan 90-8 vote**” by the Senate? What does this say about the prestigious Senate?
After Qassem Soleimani’s killing by American military forces on Jan 3rd, weapons manufacturer Raytheon’s stock shot up, closing at a record high. The man in charge of the Pentagon, Defense Sect Mark Esper, spent years as Raytheon’s top lobbyist before joining the Trump admin.
Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) January 15, 2020
Before the Raytheon man, the interim Defense Secretary before him was an ex Boeing exec. That’s how it works, folks. And it will work that way until we get the money out of politics.
Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) January 15, 2020
Lee Fang of The Intercept reported shortly after Soleimani’s assassination in an article titled, "TV PUNDITS PRAISING SULEIMANI ASSASSINATION NEGLECT TO DISCLOSE TIES TO ARMS INDUSTRY" that,
“Many of the pundits who appeared on national television or were quoted in major publications to praise the president’s actions have undisclosed ties to the defense industry — the only domestic industry that stands to gain from increased violence.
Jack Keane, a retired Army general, appeared on Fox News and NPR over the last three days to praise Trump for the strike on Suleimani. ... Keane has worked for military companies, including General Dynamics and Blackwater, and currently serves as a partner at SCP Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in defense contractors.
Van Hipp, chair of the lobbying firm American Defense International, which represents more than two dozen defense contractors — including Raytheon, Palantir, and General Atomics, the manufacturer of the MQ-9 Reaper drone used in the Suleimani slaying — published an opinion column on Fox News’s website praising Trump and suggesting increased pressure on the Iranian government.”
While these examples selected were attributed to FOX, many other outlets would be named. It would be bad enough to give these defense contracting lobbyists a platform to lobby for war given disclosure to their ties to the defense industry, but media outlets not even disclosing the ties of Hipp, for example, goes beyond the realm of stupidity and into the realms of deception and journalistic malpractice.
Fang would go on to list others, such as David Petraeas, who appeared on multiple mass media platforms such as CBS’s “Face the Nation” to praise Soleimani’s assassination. As the Intercept reports, he “notably, works for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co., the investment firm with holdings in several major defense contractors that is reportedly moving to ‘build up its defense portfolio at a time when military budgets are skyrocketing.’” Why are these defense industry ties being exposed by the Intercept, and not disclosed by mainstream outlets such as Fox News where Hobbs, Keane, and other similar figures appeared? What does this say about these outlets?
“Operation Mockingbird never, ever ended.”
The ties between the media and intelligence community are well founded, and those are the connections that have been discovered and identified. To illustrate how little consideration is given to potential conflicts of interest, consider the fact that a self declared "double agent" and former intelligence agent, Navid Jamali, could become an outright "Editor-at-large" for one of the nation's biggest publications, Newsweek.
Wow, now that we're going to war, a former spy is going to be in charge of a mainstream publication, with absolutely no background in real journalism. You tell me if something is wrong with the media or not. Or the state of America and the wider Western world for that matter. https://twitter.com/NaveedAJamali/status/1214691848066744320
Tareq Haddad (@Tareq_Haddad) January 7, 2020
Carl Bernstein’s groundbreaking report that exposed Operation Mockingbird, published for the Rolling Stone in 1977, can be found here. The header on his website reads “After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000-word cover story, published in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977, is reprinted below”
In the report from 40 years ago, Bernstein wrote for the Rolling Stone that,
“Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.”
“Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.”
The Washington Post publisher, Philip Graham, was recruited by the CIA's Frank Wisner to direct Operation Mockingbird from within, upon its creation in 1948. “Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war.”
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) had published a piece in 2000 titled “Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working on News at CNN?” that reported of several PSYOP officers from the US Army’s 5th Psychological Operations Group at Ft. Bragg having acquired roles in the news division of CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta. This was in the final days of the Kosovo war, which the CIA was highly involved in, as detailed by the Guardian's article, “ 'CIA's bastard army ran riot in Balkans' backed extremists' ”. The US also participated in NATO airstrikes in 1999 that killed thousands of civilians under humanitarian guise, setting a precedent for the future humanitarian regime change efforts to come.
The CIA has infiltrated:
Redacted Tonight (@RedactedTonight) January 7, 2020
- Academia
- The media
- Newsooms
+ more
They do it all to control us & force capitalist narratives into our worldviews.
Always question what you're being told & why!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKWj0DpH6F8
There is a reason that the Guardian was found critically reporting on this regime change war while mainstream American media outlets championed it while neglecting to cover the inconvenient truths surrounding the KLA, the side NATO was supporting, despite it being highly relevant to American taxpayers.
Now the Washington Post , who’s publisher was the head of Operation MockingBird upon its creation in the late 1940’s, is owned by Bezos who has quite a cozy relationship with the CIA, worth more than 600 million. In an email exchange with an executive editor for the Washington Post, the director of rootsaction.org , Normon Solomon, stated in 2014,
“If Amazon's $600 million multiyear cloud contract with the CIA is a small fraction of the company's revenue, there is clear intent for it to grow larger. And $600 million is, by itself, hardly insignificant; let's remember that Mr. Bezos bought the Post for less than half that amount.
'We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA,' a statement from Amazon said two months ago. In public statements, Mr. Bezos and Amazon have made clear that they view this as a growing part of Amazon's business: a feather in the corporate cap of the company in its drive to increase market share of such business operations. "
The conflict of interest is clear. A media outlet, The Washington Post, read and trusted by millions for their news, is owned by a parent company, Amazon, that has a contract with the CIA providing twice the entire amount Amazon paid to acquire total ownership of the Washington Post.
The FBI has even admitted to impersonating journalists, written a public guide on how to do it, and continues to do so with no apologies. In the age of the internet and social media, after operation Mockingbird was exposed in 1976, journalism has become vastly more decentralized, and independent media has sprung forth, giving less control over narratives by a centralized group of gatekeepers controlling the flow of information. Because of this rise in capability for resistance to CIA narratives, it only comes natural that the CIA would counter this with Operation Mockingbird remodeled and expanded - which relies on Big Tech Censorship to stifle independent media.
This is the reason the mainstream media gave no coverage when Tulsi recently proposed a bill to withdraw all troops from Syria just months ago. It is the same reason many Americans do not know Gabbard's core platform, but know that she had met with Assad. It isn't just Tulsi, one can also observe it in how the media treats Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang relative to the neoliberal candidates.
Bernie Sanders, the overwhelming favorite of 18-34-year-old voters and the favorite of voters under 45, who is leading in NH and tied for first in Iowa and California, didn’t even make the NYT editorial board’s top four candidates.
Alex Kotch (@alexkotch) January 20, 2020
The CNN moderator of the 7th debate in January asked Sanders at the debate,
“Senator Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Senator Warren confirmed in a statement, that in 2018, you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?”
You don't need to be a lawyer to know that that was an unfair and leading question.
None of the sources were in the meeting.
Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) January 13, 2020
How can CNN publish this? https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-meeting/index.html
Again: Operation Mockingbird is still in effect.
This is evident in the way the majority of the media blindly accepts whatever narrative is spun their way by the state department, or in the way the media cites anonymous US officials to propagate unverifiable claims that lead us closer to war. The operation is able to be passively observed in the way a veteran congresswoman such as Tulsi Gabbard is able to be smeared and called a foreign agent for simply meeting with a foreign leader of a nation whose internal affairs we are highly involved in, or for her demanding evidence before concluding the verdict of a crime - Evidence that had not yet been presented.
Innocent until proven guilty is a right our country was founded on, but our representatives in the highest level of government unilaterally betrayed this American value, and in a way, betrayed America - all the while branding the ONLY legislator that was brave enough to take a stand against the hearsay as an “Assad apologist” and accusing her of “supporting a dictator”.
Julian Assange once quoted Snowden, “There is a reason Edward Snowden did not go to the New York Times, he said it himself, they suppress stories”.
Operation Mockingbird can be seen in how the mainstream media has treated all 3 of the candidates with anti-establishment bases - which, needless to say, has been unfair. But Tulsi in particular is facing harsher treatment, as she is being almost entirely blacklisted from mainstream platforms unless she is the subject of a smear/hit piece. CNN’s Town Hall precluding the New Hampshire debate featured Yang and Sanders, but not Gabbard, despite her polling higher than 3 of the candidates that were actually invited to the Townhall.
As reported by the Washington Examiner before the event,
“The congresswoman is outpolling Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang, and Deval Patrick in New Hampshire, according to RealClearPolitics polling averages. Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts and an establishment favorite, is only polling at 0.3% nationally. Most voters have no idea who this guy is. And while Yang and Steyer fare far better in the polls, they still don’t deserve to be invited, on the basis of objective polling, at Gabbard’s expense.”
If you count the times Tulsi has polled higher than Klobuchar, including after the ABC debate which was one week before CNN's NH Townhall, then she was out-polling half of the candidates invited to attend the Town hall.
This was not the first time Gabbard was denied access to a debate event despite sufficient polling criteria.
The Hill would publish an article titled "CNN's blatant and bizarre Tulsi Gabbard snub”which would go on to highlight explicit proof of the damage done to Gabbard’s reputation as a result of Clinton’s slanderous abuse of influence by insinuating Tulsi was a Russian asset in pursuit of advancing her personal agenda. Clinton’s smear would prompt Gabbard to sue her for $50 million, which, as Tulsi said, “should have been $50 billion.”
Inevitably, this higher standard set for Tulsi in polling her way into the debates, if that was the standard like it is supposed to be, pissed off her supporters - as it should of. It is blatant election meddling. Bloomberg's "buying his way" into the debates added insult to injury at the time.
The @DNC is letting Bloomberg buy his way into the debates.@CNN, the DNC’s sidekick, is not allowing Tulsi Gabbard a Town Hall while allowing lower polling candidates to have one.
Donna #Tulsi2020 🌺 #NoWarWithIran ☮️ (@DonnaLynnNH) February 1, 2020
DNC is considering bringing back superdelegates to vote on first ballot.#CorruptionOverCountry
When Fox News asked Gabbard about the phenomenon, she stated, "We received no explanation. I don't even think we've gotten a response to date about why they're excluding the first female combat veteran ever to run for president." Her campaign would go on to set up a protest outside the townhall event.
While Operation Mockingbird is still in effect, the modern age of internet has disrupted its effectiveness with greater access to decentralized information sources, allowing independent media a medium to thrive. However, in a world so dramatically dependent on social media, a world where Americans are growing increasingly reliant on social media as a news source, replacing centralized “mainstream” media networks with centralized “big tech” giants is threatening to reverse a lot of the progress made in broadening the narrative stream.
Tulsi has a page on her website condemning media bias which is part of her "press kit" that states,
Any person asking for the awesome responsibility of being commander-in-chief deserves scrutiny: that’s a healthy part of the process. But consistently, Tulsi has been subject to disproportionately malign coverage by a corporate media that has tried to diminish and smear a candidate who is challenging conventional wisdom and powerful vested interests.
To give just a small sampling, elite outlets including the New York Times and the Atlantic have published articles with headlines like What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To? and The Enduring Mystery of Tulsi Gabbard as if Tulsi has been unclear about her mission in this campaign, which she talks about every single day: to bring about a sea-change in U.S. foreign policy, stop squandering trillions of dollars overseas, and redirect those resources to serve the needs of the American people here at home.
But as late as last November, after Tulsi had been campaigning for over 10 months on this message, the Washington Post still published an article struggling to understand what “her deal is.” Memo to confused journalists: If you want to understand what Tulsi’s deal is, simply listen to her speak. But by casting aspersions in this deceitful manner, corrupt corporate media elites have intentionally sowed seeds of doubts about Tulsi in the minds of voters who rely on these outlets to make decisions about candidates.
Her condemnation would go on the address the fact that while she is subject to a disproportionate amount of shoddy hit-pieces, she receives the least coverage from the mainstream media than the rest of the candidates.
Smear: Tulsi’s visit with Assad and comments in Syria diminishes her value as a candidate
Reality: Following Gabbard’s presidential bid, a smear campaign from multiple angles was initiated. One of these angles was Syria.
The Business Insider reported that,
“Following her campaign announcement — and amid President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria — Gabbard was widely criticized for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017. Gabbard is accused of downplaying the Syrian regime's role in chemical attacks that have killed scores of civilians, despite the Trump administration saying it had ‘very high confidence’ that Syria was responsible.”
As if the Trump Administration's 'very high confidence' in Syria's culpability should mean anything. You wouldn’t know it from reading the aforementioned article, but Gabbard’s “downplaying the Syrian regime’s role” was demanding a shred of evidence before concluding Assad’s guilt, evidence which had not been presented, not to the public nor to Congress.
The Hill reported on April 10th, 2017 in an article titled, “Gabbard takes heat from Dems for skepticism of Syria chemical attack” that,
“While Gabbard is far from the only U.S. politician to criticize the attacks, she is perhaps the only U.S. lawmaker who has questioned whether Assad was behind the chemical attack.
‘If President Assad is found to be responsible after an independent investigation for these horrific chemical weapons attacks, I'll be the first one to denounce him, to call him a war crime and to call for his prosecution in the International Criminal Court,’ she told Wolf Blitzer.
She condemned the strikes as ‘reckless,’ urging restraint until the chemical attacks can be thoroughly investigated and there’s absolute proof Assad was behind them. Of the administration’s claims that Assad was responsible, she said, 'The fact remains that they have not brought that evidence before Congress.’ ”
Notice how The Hill’s reporting worded that Gabbard urged restraint until there is “absolute proof” that Assad was behind them - with the implication that there was actually some reasonable evidence to begin with, even a semblance, other than the oh-so-trustworthy intelligence community’s “take our word for it”. The same intelligence community that has consistently lied to the public and Congress so many times across such a broad time frame. How can you punish somebody for a crime that has not been solved?”.
And this is the fundamental issue. The mainstream media, falling in line with the state department and intelligence community, essentially pushed the notion that the government’s word was all the evidence needed for a strike against Assad in response...this being post Iraq-War fallout, making this mainstream notion even more disingenuous than it already was. If you questioned the unsubstantiated claims, you were a deemed a conspiracy theorist, dictator supporter, or even a foreign asset!
But the truth surrounding the intelligence community’s lies has spread far and wide, having been documented quite extensively. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. This dynamic would repeat itself the same month, the following year, with Trump launching missiles at Syria in response to another chemical weapon attack - days before the initial OPCW fact-finding team had even arrived at the scene of the attack to gather evidence.
There has been no investigation of any kind into an alleged chemical weapons attack in an area crawling with known terrorists, and yet the @StateDept has already concluded that "the Assad regime must be held accountable" and Russia "ultimately bears responsibility". Sounds legit. pic.twitter.com/wOQcOAbNAb
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) April 8, 2018
An article by Reuters the same day as the one above by the Hill, April 10th 2017, reported with much better journalistic integrity that, Gabbard had incited the attacks from senior democrats after "refusing to take the Syrian President Bashar Assad's complicity in the Idlib chemical attack at face value and demanding proof." Reuters also acknowledged that while speaking live on CNN after the retaliatory strikes on Syria, Gabbard had "reminded the host of the destructive invasions in Libya and Iraq, the latter based on a false intelligence pretext". The Hill did not feel this point to noteworthy enough to cover. RT would go on to report,
"Despite being repeatedly pressed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to unconditionally accept the so far unrevealed intelligence, Gabbard retorted: ‘Last time I checked, Wolf, the Congress has the authority and responsibility for declaring war, for authorizing use of military force.’
‘Whether the President or the Pentagon or the Secretary of State say they have the evidence the fact remains that they have not brought that evidence before Congress, they have not brought that evidence before the American people and have not sought authorization from Congress to launch this military attack on another country,’ Gabbard said.
She went on to argue that the US has been waging an illegal proxy war aimed at toppling the Syrian government ‘for years,’ which has only resulted in the ‘suffering of the Syrian people, hundreds of thousands of people dead, millions of refugees and the strengthening of terrorist groups in Syria like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.’ ” …
Gabbard could no longer trust the intelligence community’s claims based off undisclosed intel, and for good reason, leading her to demand proof of such serious allegations rather than join her fellow congressmen who didn’t dare question the narrative that both sides of the political establishment were so viciously asserting.
It's why Gabbard went on a private tour of Syria not to just hear from Assad, but from the opposition as well. She also made a point of meeting with religious and civil leaders as well as everyday citizens. After her trip she would state "Their message to the American people was powerful and consistent: There is no difference between ‘moderate’ rebels and Al-Qaeda / Al-Nusra or ISIS – they are all the same."
She has been a vocal opponent of Washington’s support for the rebels in Syria, arguing that weapons often end up in the hands of the terrorists.
Gabbard introduced the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, designed to stop the US government from providing direct assistance to terrorist entities, urging to ‘prohibit the Federal government from funding assistance to countries that are directly or indirectly supporting those terrorist groups.’ "
Gabbard’s frequent reminders of the CIA’s support of Al-Qaeda rebels and other Jihadi groups in Syria in order to remove Assad does not gain her any favor with the foreign policy establishment. If Assad was not responsible for the horrific attacks, then that implicates the US-backed opposition, who’s territory the attacks took place in - After all, it wouldn't be the first time, nor the second or third.
With the infamous Dhouma attacks that would later come in 2018, and the OPCW whistleblowers stepping forward in 2019, the public would get a clear picture on how Assad could be accused of and even framed for chemical attacks he did not commit, based off undisclosed evidence, and then go on to be unilaterally blamed by the international Western community without question- despite no evidence having been collected much less presented. This is not to even mention having US missiles launched at his county.
Whether or not it's convenient to accept this fact, evidence overwhelmingly points to the reality that it was the US-backed rebels that had manually placed those gas canisters in Douma, and severe pressure from Western countries(such as ours) caused the OCPW to ignore internal evidence gathered by investigators at the scene of the attack, choosing instead to rely on anonymous experts in the final report that concluded Assad’s guilt. There is a reason the very first director general of the OCPW, José Bustani, has publicly reaffirmed the validity of the whistleblowers' claims as part of an independent panel of experts.
Fun fact: When Bustani was the director general in 2002, Bolton once threatened Bustani’s kids on behalf of Kerry and the Bush administration (for what Caitlin Johnstone aptly termed “peacemongering)”, as Bustani was offering a solution for independent inspections of WMD’s, thereby threatening the regime change narrative.
I wrote an article back in May of 2019 when the first whistleblower leaked an internal engineering report originating from the Office of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(OPCW) that contradicted the OPCW’s final report which concluded Assad’s culpability in the Dhouma attacks. The whistleblower, now revealed to be Ian Henderson, provided multiple revelations in his initial leak essentially proving that the scene of the attacks was altered by the time the OPCW fact-finding team had arrived. Physics simulations as well as other forms of analysis pointed towards the gas canisters having been manually placed, rather than dropped from the sky.
Furthermore, multiple leaks erupted , or "hemorrhaged" from the OPCW since the initial leak that have further demonstrated that much of the evidence collected by the OPCW investigators who were actually at the scene of the attack was ignored in the final report, with their findings buried and contradicted by unknown “experts” who were not part of the investigative team. The way the mainstream media has blacklisted this very important development in the Syria conflict is just further evidence of Operation Mockingbird clearly still being in effect.
With the Dhouma narrative’s implosion, Tulsi’s previous stances towards Syria achieved a sort of validation and began to be more appreciated, this is how the hashtag #Tulsiwasright really got going, although it has evolved to have been made applicable to other issues such as the need for DNC debate reform as well as general electoral reform. She has been on the frontlines of this battle through legislation as well as media appearances.
In 2015, Tulsi was disinvited from a DNC debate after calling for more of them. She would double down on this in a Fox news interview the night of the debates that he was uninvited from,
“VAN SUSTEREN:Aloha. What is the problem here? Because Debbie Wasserman-Schultz says that you are not disinvited. Were you disinvited from the debate or not?
GABBARD: Greta, yes, I was. And I will leave it at that. We are about to kick off the debate here shortly and I think it's important for us to focus on the variety of very substantive and important issues that the American people are concerned about and that are facing our country.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Well, let's say -- you weren't disinvited because there was some particular spat, but rather because you thought that there should be more debates in the Democratic Party and that apparently has rubbed the chairman the wrong way. Is that a fair statement?
GABBARD: Greta, you know, I have been very public and vocal about my belief in democracy and my strong feeling that not only there should be more debates and opportunities for the American people to hear from our presidential candidates, but also that this exclusivity clause should be removed.
But, again, I think, right now, it's really important for us to focus on the presidential candidates who are going to be taking the stage here shortly and talking about the issues...
I know one issue that's on the top of my mind if I can bring it up here is what's happening right now in Syria. What's happening in the Middle East. We just heard news yesterday about the administration dropping 50 tons of weapons in Northern Syria.
We have no confidence to whose hands those weapons are going into. All we do know is that they will end up in the hands of one stripe of Islamic extremist or another because these are the people who are fighting to overthrow Assad whether it's al-Qaeda, al-Nusra or these other Islamic extremist groups.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Congresswoman, I just want to say one thing in reference to the spat and I'm not going to beat a dead horse. I'm team Gabbard on this one. It's that I think more debates are great for democracy. Republican ought to have more debates and Democrats ought to have more debates. So I'm with you on that one.”
2 years later, Gabbard would do her tour of Syria, visiting Assad along with his opposition, which provoked heavy criticism as already acknowledged. After her tour, the 2017 attacks would happen, which she would of course demand evidence for before being relentlessly attacked.
(1/3) Horrific Syria chemical attack is a war crime that must be thoroughly condemned.
Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) April 4, 2017
(2/3) Whoever is found responsible, be it the Syrian govt, al-Qaeda, or ISIS, (all have access to chemical weapons) must be held accountable
Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) April 4, 2017
Here is what Megan McCain would reply.
.@TulsiGabbard you're actually going to avoid saying Assad? How dare you - you know exactly who is responsible for this!
Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) April 4, 2017
Others would join her.
People who have insisted Gabbard is the future of the Democratic Party may need to consider her outré views on issues like Assad... https://twitter.com/CNN/status/850477149895131136
Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) April 8, 2017
***Here was one of Tulsi’s responses to these wave of condemnations. ***
Those who've declared Trump a habitual liar now vilify those refusing to blindly follow him into another regime change war. Hypocrisy.
Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) April 10, 2017
Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden in conjunction with former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean suggested that Gabbard was not fit to serve in Congress. Well, Tanden at least used subtlety, where as Howard Dean tweeted, “This is a disgrace. Gabbard should not be in Congress.”
In response to this criticism in 2017, Rob Cotton wrote an opinion piece for the inquisitr titled “Howard Dean Should Apologize To Tulsi Gabbard And Retire From Public Life”,
Gabbard’s position is completely reasonable ...
Tulsi Gabbard clearly is taking the position that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should be prosecuted for war crimes if it is, in fact, proven that he was behind the recent chemical attacks. For Howard Dean to spin this as somehow indicative of Gabbard supporting Assad is both intellectually dishonest and borderline libelous.”
The intellectual dishonesty did not stop in 2017. When Tulsi announced her campaign in 2019, the Daily Beast ran a headline the same day titled, “Tulsi Gabbard, Bashar Assad’s Favorite Democrat, Is Running for President”.
Naveed Jamali, the former intelligence operative/spy turned editor-at-large for Newsweek, tweeted after the 2nd debate
Like Jill Stein and Donald Trump, Gabbard is counting on Russian support. This is why she won’t criticize Assad. This is what we’ve become. An election rife with foreign influence. This is how they attack our election security, not by hacking, but by doing this. https://t.co/delzVncET1
Naveed Jamali (@NaveedAJamali) August 1, 2019
An important reply to the tweet that the former spook turned Editor-at-large had quoted to say "she won't criticize Assad" read
Wow. Now I remember why I stopped following you. She rebukes Assad in this video but the video was cut off and omits her statement. She has done it over and over and over again. “I do not dispute that” in response to Anderson’s question about Assad’s record.
Ruth Cherri (@ruthcherri) August 1, 2019
After the 2nd democratic debate, in response to remarks similar to the ones made by Gabbard in the Rueter’s article above, Lindsay Graham tweeted out,
Apparently Congresswoman Gabbard missed the debacles in Iraq and Syria when Obama rejected sound military advice.
Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 1, 2019
If you want al-Qaeda and ISIS to come back in Afghanistan follow her so-called leadership and watch terrorism come roaring back.
.. Brilliant.
We stop ISIS and Al-Qaeda by continuing to deny that we have been funding them, and continue the current regime change agenda - it is fool-proof. What could go wrong?
Of course, Lindsey Graham has many ties to the defense industry who funded his last election cycle .
This controversy behind her simply meeting with a foreign head of state in a country whose affairs we are highly involved in or demanding evidence before concluding the verdict of a crime is a clear indication of how the media will toe-the-line as the political establishment shames a legislator for actually doing their job. Instead of questioning the undisclosed evidence, and intelligence community and state department's unsubstantiated assertions, most of the media bashed the only politician willing to. That is state-run journalism.
As Gabbard stated in 2017, “Whatever you think about President Assad, the fact is that he is the president of Syria. In order for any possibility of a viable peace agreement to occur, there has to be a conversation with him.”
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