Shame Game Heats Up for Tulsi
Tulsi Gabbard still confronting "forever" smears en route to DNI confirmation
With evidence-based claims at a premium, especially during a presidential transition, this Navy veteran and 2024 Green Party voter just had to make the time to rebut NW Citizen’s atypical hit piece, Gabbard and Hegseth: Why are they not Profoundly Ashamed?
And frankly, it would come as no surprise to my Lib friends that I would support Tulsi Gabbard’s DNI nomination. Not only do I find her more than qualified, but she might even shake up our hegemonic, interventionist foreign policy should she be confirmed. Of course I “wasted” my vote on Jill Stein, so what does this “Putin apologist” know…or is it “Assad apologist” now?
Gabbard first caught my attention in 2016 when she resigned as DNC Vice Chair to endorse Bernie Sanders, so I knew then she had spine. But when she remarked in 2019 that she kept her distinctive streak of white hair, after leaving Iraq and it had returned to its natural color, as a reminder of the price we all pay for the US’s endless wars, I was totally on board.
"It's a reminder, every single day of the cost of war of those we lost and my mission in life to seek peace and to fight for peace."
While I am not able to weigh in on Pete Hegseth’s qualifications to be sworn in even as a member of a school board, much less the DoD Secretary, I do consider myself uniquely qualified to write in support of Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence. After my more than 35 years in federal service, including a combat tour of Vietnam as an Airborne Electronic Warfare Officer and several years as a SCIF-bound TS/SCI FAA Emergency Services Watch Supervisor, I am hardly a layperson on the national security system and vetting process. If nearly 100 former national security officials are ‘alarmed’ at the prospect of Gabbard providing oversight for the intel community – ‘apoplectic’ might be more apt - she just might be the perfect outsider for the job.
In order to unravel another biased appraisal of Tulsi Gabbard, let’s briefly step outside the corporate media smear bubble, now obviously engulfing this local online news magazine.
First, dismissing Gabbard’s intel experience is a disservice. Although limited, her stints on the House Homeland Security and Armed Services Subcommittees on Intelligence, which has jurisdiction over Defense programs related to Military Intelligence and Counter-terrorism among its wide range of intelligence related responsibilities, including oversight of critical military activities in the areas of Special Operations Forces and Intelligence operations, were at least insightful primers.
Outspoken and resolute, Tulsi Gabbard’s healthy dose of skepticism has fed most of the conspiracy trolling that continue to dominate search engine analogs.
Predictably, Gabbard’s foreign policy stance has been a consistent source of unease for intel insiders and DC warmongering elites. Her controversial 2017 fact-finding meeting with Bashar al-Assad, during which she sought diplomatic solutions – God forbid - to the Syrian civil war, drew bipartisan criticism. Similarly, her call for neutrality in the Ukraine conflict, alongside her critique of NATO expansion, has led the intel community to question her alignment with U.S. strategic interests. During her fourth term Gabbard noted with concern that a CIA program "was directly and indirectly helping to equip and train and provide support to different armed groups, including those who are allied with and affiliated with al-Qaeda, to overthrow the Syrian government," leading to her Stop Arming Terrorist Act legislation in 2017, and just as controversial the No More Presidential Wars Act in 2018.
At the press conference with co-sponsor, the late antiwar Republican Walter Jones, Gabbard said the bill is necessary because “our country continues to remain in a state of perpetual war at a great cost to the American people and to the innocent civilians around the world who are affected by these wars, with no declaration of war by Congress and no say by the American people.”
Moreover, I look forward to a DNI Tulsi Gabbard prioritizing a deep-dive investigation into Homeland Security’s Quiet Skies program. This TSA surveillance overreach barely showed up on corporate news sites but was clearly an egregious act of political harassment and intimidation. I was subjected as well to this harassment myself as a board member of Veterans for Peace. Matt Taibbi and I wrote about her additional, unsolicited government intel experience on Substack here and here.
Gabbard’s healthy dose of skepticism has fed most of the conspiracy trolling that continue to dominate search engine analogs. The themes and hit pieces will vary if only to shut her the hell up, with or without a successful confirmation in January. Speaking with conviction, her non-consensus, anti-interventionist views will never result in a hosting gig on CNN, MSNBC or even PBS.
Former CIA analyst and Veterans For Peace Advisory Board Member Ray McGovern, having briefed her early in her career, gives her a shot at success in Consortium News.
President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence (DNI) will cause shockwaves in and among the eighteen fiefdoms that now comprise the U.S. intelligence community.
Gabbard will be fighting an uphill battle if she tries to herd those eighteen cats into a cohesive whole and restore integrity to intelligence analysis…In short, the odds are against her. Whether she succeeds depends, first and foremost, on how strongly the president backs her. Unlike most former DNIs, she has already demonstrated uncommon courage, as well as smarts and political skill.
McGovern added that a major hurdle will be managing a large institution “populated with career bureaucrats all too accustomed to telling the ultimate boss, the president, what he wants to hear.”
Regrettably, Tulsi Gabbard’s now almost comically transparent national narrative vilifications are not going away anytime soon. They will be unleashed full tilt boogie this month and next and tribally parroted through the next election cycle. Plainly her national security narrative detractors are either willfully obtuse or sharing the same brain cell. According to Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team,
These unfounded attacks are from the same geniuses who have blood on their hands from decades of faulty ‘intelligence,’ including the non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
And anyone engaged in antiwar or political dissent in opposition to the National Security State’s endless war narrative is going to somehow be similarly targeted. But ‘Profound Shame’ should never enter the discussion.
The purpose of my article on Gabbard and Hegseth was to point out the shallow nature of their experience to hold high office. To do that I used as a point of comparison my own, decidedly more comprehensive, experience of 30 years in government service, most of which was in intelligence at high levels of the Dept of Defense. That Gabbard or Hegseth hold certain views about our foreign policy in the Middle East or elsewhere was not my point. I might even agree with Gabbard, Hegseth is a cipher, but a high-schooler might hold the same opinions yet that is no basis for qualification to high office.
To call my article a hit piece is more than a bit hyperbolic. Hit pieces are characterized by false or misleading information. If there is any such information in my article, I would like you to point it out. I made some judgments about the capacity of the two nominees to fill these positions based on my experience and the publicly available information on the experience of the candidates. I stand by my comments.
At this link is the outline of the Authorities and Duties of the DNI. I see nothing in the description about foreign policy direction or shake-ups. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/who-we-are
NB: Here is the correct and direct link to my article on NWCitizen. https://nwcitizen.com/entry/gabbard-and-hegseth-why-are-they-not-profoundly-ashamed
Dick Conoboy
Hear! Hear! Her nomination hearings will be a tonic and hopefully she'll get past them to fill the post. It takes so little to scare the crap out of the fans of Empire and she has more than enough information and guts to do it.