In Senate Hearing, Tulsi Gabbard Is Asked Some Ridiculous, Pro-War Questions.

In Tulsi Gabbard's Senate Hearing She Faced Pro-War McCarthyite Questions

Yesterday former Hawaii representative and army veteran Tulsi Gabbard faced questions from the Senate before a vote was held to secure her nomination as the Trump administration’s Director of National Intelligence.

I personally disagree with many of Tulsi Gabbard's political positions. I think her support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza is vile. I also think she is very loose with political principles given the fact that she went from correctly calling Trump “Saudi Arabia's bitch” over his support for the country’s genocide in Yemen to claiming that Trump is anti-war.

These issues, however, were not brought up at the Senate hearing. Instead, establishment Senators from both parties grilled her over some of her more positive views such as her support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and opposition to the proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine. In this article, I will go over some of the dumbest questions Tulsi Gabbard was asked in the hearing.

Tulsi Gabbard Smeared Over Her Support Of Edward Snowden.

One of the most talked about issues in Gabbard’s Senate hearing was her position on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden who leaked documents proving the NSA was illegally abusing their spying powers to monitor Americans.

As the New York Times reported

It was her refusal to fully denounce Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked reams of classified information about government surveillance programs in 2013, that seemed to elicit the most concern among both Republicans and Democrats.

Colorado Democratic Senator Michael Bennet took issue with Gabbard’s previous support of Snowden by asking her “Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?” The Senator doubled down on this claim in an X post where he wrote that “Anyone who refuses to label a traitor to the U.S. as a traitor is completely unqualified to lead our intelligence community”.

By all definitions, Edward Snowden is a patriot, not a traitor. On his part, he has said that he leaked the documents out of patriotic devotion to the US Constitution, not over treason.

In an interview with CNN at the time he said:

The reality is, the situation determined that this needed to be told to the public. The Constitution of the United States had been violated on a massive scale. Now, had that not happened, had the government not gone too far and overreached, we wouldn’t be in a situation where whistleblowers were necessary.

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), America’s top civil rights organization agrees with this. At the time the organisation's executive director Anthony D. Romero said that “Edward Snowden is a patriot” writing that :

As a whistleblower of illegal government activity that was sanctioned and kept secret by the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government for years, he undertook great personal risk for the public good. And he has single-handedly reignited a global debate about the extent and nature of government surveillance and our most fundamental rights as individuals.

Furthermore, there is no debate about whether the spying programs Snowden exposed were illegal. In 2020 a US court ruled that they were. As Reuters reported:

Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans' telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful - and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.

In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans' telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.

In other words, Michael Bennet and other Senators are smearing Snowden as a “traitor” for doing his patriotic duty and exposing government abuses which are objectively illegal and unconstitutional.

Benett was far from the only Senator in the hearing to take issue with Gabbards’ support of Snowden. As The New York Times wrote:

Three Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Todd Young of Indiana — also took issue with Ms. Gabbard’s views on Mr. Snowden

One of the most ludicrous question asked of Gabbard was by the Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford who asked:

Was he a traitor at the time when he took America’s secrets, released them in public and then ran to China and became a Russian citizen?

Aside from his ignoring the fact that the abuses Snowden revealed were illegal and unconstitutional, his insinuation that Snowden was a Chinese or Russian asset is blatantly false.

When releasing the documents, Snowden actually fled to Hong Kong, the former British colony that returned to China in 1997.

Snowden stated that he chose Hong Kong, not out of loyalty to the Chinese government but because of its population’s opposition to Chinese government policies. As he said at the time:

Hong Kong has a strong tradition of free speech. People think China, Great Firewall … but the people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting on the streets, making their views known … and I believe the Hong Kong government is actually independent in relation to a lot of other leading Western governments.

The outlet MIC reported at the time that natives in Hong Kong who were critical of the Chinese government supported Snowden out of a common interest of opposing government overreach. As the outlet wrote:

Already, Snowden is receiving support from natives despite the fact that his case has nothing to do with Hong Kong policies, other than the fact that he and the island natives are fighting under the same principles. On June 15, an estimated 300 to 900 protesters marched from Hong Kong’s central district to the U.S. Consulate General to the Hong Kong government headquarters, denouncing "big brother" government surveillance and Snowden’s extradition.

The outlet went on to report that Snowden was actually viewed as a hero to anti-government protests in Hong Kong and would help them in their fight, writing that:

Snowden needs Hong Kong, but the island may need Snowden just as much as well. His appearance comes at a pivotal time, when the Hong Kong-Beijing standoff may finally be reaching a tipping point. Hong Kong loyalists — or pan-democrats — are planning for a massive demonstration — Occupy Central — for next summer that seeks to debilitate the international port city's economic epicenter unless they are given universal suffrage. Analysts fear that if such a protest takes place, chaos and violence reminiscent of Tiananmen Square could ensue.

With such high stakes locally combined with the international media spotlight on Snowden, pan-democrats have even more of a reason to protect Snowden — any concession to big government at this point in the conflict will be a sign of weakness. Whether he likes it or not, Snowden has become a symbol of freedom from watchdog governments not just in America, but in Hong Kong as well.

The inference that Snowden fled to Russia because he was a Russian spy infers that he intended to flee to Russia, another thing that is objectively false.

Snowden never actually intended to seek refuge in Russia and instead was making his way to Ecuador where the country’s leftist president Rafael Correa had granted him asylum at the time. As the BBC reported :

Edward Snowden had fled from the United States to Hong Kong after leaking secret documents revealing extensive US internet and phone surveillance.

On Sunday, he left Hong Kong for Moscow, from where he is reportedly going to make his way to Cuba, and on to Ecuador, where he is expected to formally hand in his request for asylum.

At the time the U.S. was trying everything to get Snowden extradited to the United States, even going so far as to ground the plane of the Bolivian president Evo Morales because they thought he was harboring him.

Snowden was forced to stay in Russia because the United States cancelled his passport while he was in the country on his way to Ecuador. As Reuters reported at the time:

The United States has revoked the passport of former national security contractor Edward Snowden, an official source familiar with the decision said on Sunday.

It was not immediately clear how Snowden was able to travel, and the official offered no details. An aircraft thought to be carrying him landed in Moscow on Sunday after Hong Kong let the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor leave the territory, despite Washington's efforts to extradite him to face espionage charges.

To recap, James Lankford was smearing Snowden as a Chinese agent because he released documents in the region of the country most hostile to the Chinese government and a Russian agent because he was forced to harbour in Russia after the United States cancelled his passport on the way to Ecuador.

Tulsi Gabbard Smeared For Opposing Ukraine Proxy War.

In the hearing, Gabbard was repeatedly lambasted for opposing the proxy war in Ukraine. Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said to her “I just do not understand how you can blame NATO for Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine”

Kansas Republican Senator Jerry Moran similarly asked her if Russia would “get a pass” from her.

Perhaps the most unhinged question Gabbard faced on Ukraine was from the aforementioned Michael Bennet who had a public meltdown over Gabbard's tweet where she said that “this war and suffering could have been easily avoided if Biden admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine becoming a member of NATO”.

Warner and Benett may think claims of NATO expansion being a legitimate security concern for Russia are outrageous but the former CIA head William Burns disagrees.

In a 2008 memo released by WikiLeaks, Burns was quoted saying that NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia “include fears that the issue could potentially split the country (Ukraine) in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” Burn also wrote that:

Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.

Former U.S. diplomat George Kennan also disagreed as he similarly said that NATO expansion was “the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

Benett continued his meltdown based on the fact that Tulsi Gabbard called the Ukraine war a “regime change war” and a “proxy war”. These two facts are so objectively true that even Western government officials have admitted it.

Joe Biden slipped up and admitted the goal of the proxy war in Ukraine was regime change when he openly stated “For God’s sake this man (Putin) cannot remain in power”

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Jhonson admitted on a podcast that the war was a proxy war when he said

We’re waging a proxy war, but we’re not giving our proxies the ability to do the job. For years now, we’ve been allowing them to fight with one hand tied behind their backs, and it has been cruel.

Tulsi Gabbard Attacked Over Syria

In a viral moment in the hearing, Gabbard was attacked by Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly for her correct statements that “The U.S. is providing direct and indirect support to terrorist groups in order to overthrow the Syrian government” and her statement that Trump was “supporting Al Qaeda”

Kelly accused her of echoing “Putin lines” and comments from “Syrian officials” and accused her of repeating “claims” from Iran and Russia. After Gabbard responded by backing up her comments Kelly again accused her of having a “tendency of repeating Russian, Syrian and Iranian information”.

However, what Gabbard said about Syria is not a Russian, Syrian or Iranian claim but an objective fact that has been acknowledged in Western mainstream media.

Going back to 2012 Hillary Clinton’s advisor Jake Sullivan sent her an email that stated “Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria”

Seymour Hersh reported in the London Review of Books that the CIA authorized a “ratline” which was “used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition”. Hersh reported that “Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida”

Moving to 2013 Obama approved “Operation Tymber Sycamore”, a CIA program designed to arm and train Rebels in an attempt to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria. According to the New York Times, it was “one of the most expensive efforts to arm and train rebels since the agency’s program arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s” and was “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A”.

An American official told the Washington Post that the program “may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers”. The Post also reported that the CIA spent “$1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget” on this regime change operation and spent “roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program.”

As for where these arms and training went, Tulsi was correct that they mostly went to Jihadist groups including al-Qaida. The New York Times reported that the “Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front” “often fought alongside the C.I.A.-backed rebels.” They also reported that “some of their C.I.A. weapons ended up with Nusra Front fighters — and that some of the rebels joined the group”.

The American think-tank “Century Foundation” also found that the CIA arms to Syria “functioned as battlefield auxiliaries and weapons farms for larger Islamist and jihadist factions, including Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate”.

While Tulsi focused on Obama’s Syria policy given the fact that she is now part of the Trump administration, her older comments that the Trump administration “was supporting Al Qaeda” in Syria were also correct.

Trump not only bombed Syrian forces twice, effectively acting as Al Nusera’s defense, but played a large part in the recent regime change in Syria.

He placed the “Caesar sanctions” on Syria designed to harm the Syrian population. The Washington Post recently reported that these sanctions

have weakened the medical system that millions of Syrians rely on — preventing hospitals from maintaining or importing lifesaving diagnostic machines and making it more difficult to provide timely treatment to the wounded and the sick.

The Post also reported that “The powerful had found their way around the sanctions, it seemed; the public, meanwhile, had been left to suffer.”

Dana Stouel, a former US Defense Department official admitted that these sanctions along with America’s military occupation of “The resource-rich economic powerhouse of Syria where the hydrocarbons are as well as the agricultural powerhouse” were intended to keep Syria “in rubble” in order to block “economic reconstruction” so that the U.S. could force regime change in Syria.

This policy eventually helped lead to the recent regime change in Syria, leading the country to be ruled by Abu Mohammad al-Julani who now goes by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former member of both Al Qaeda and ISIS who the US government previously described as a “terrorist” who has “carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians”.

Both the US and UK governments officially recognize HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), the group led by Jolani as a “terrorist” organization and “an alternative name for Al Qaeda”

A Sad Embarrassment

As I said in the opening of this article, I have many issues with Tulsi Gabbard, yet the issues brought up in the Senate hearing were none of them. The bi-partisan neocon establishment instead decided to attack her for supporting a whistleblower who exposed their crimes and daring to oppose some of their blood-soaked proxy wars.

These Senators thought they were exposing Gabbard with the questions, but they were instead exposing themselves as uneducated ignorant warmongers.