Far worse than the worship of Mueller is the refusal to scrutinize the abysmal foreign policy record of Joe Biden, currently the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Of the Democrats in the Senate at that time, Biden was the most enthusiastic of the cheerleaders for war, waving his pompoms and cartwheeling in rhythm to Dick Cheney’s music. Biden said repeatedly that America had “no choice but to eliminate the threat” posed by Saddam Hussein. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his blustering was uniquely influential.
The former vice president now claims that his “only mistake was trusting the Bush administration,” implying he was tricked into supporting the war. This line is not as persuasive as he imagines. First, it raises the question—can’t we nominate someone who wasn’t tricked? Second, its logic crumbles in the face of Biden’s recent decision to hire Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, as his campaign’s foreign policy advisor. Burns was also a vociferous supporter of the war. An enterprising reporter should ask Biden whether Burns was also tricked. Is the Biden campaign an assembly of rubes?
Instead, the press is likelier to interrogate Biden over his holding hands and giving hugs to women at public events. Criticism of Biden’s “inappropriate touching” has become so strident that the candidate had to record a video to explain his behavior. The moral standards of America’s political culture seem to rate kissing a woman on the back of the head as a graver offense than catastrophic war.
Polling well below Biden in the race is the congresswoman from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard. She alone on the Democratic stage has made criticism of American militarism central to her candidacy. A veteran of the Iraq war and a highly decorated major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, Gabbard offers an intelligent and humane perspective on foreign affairs. She’s called the regime change philosophy “disastrous,” advocated for negotiation with hostile foreign powers, and backed a reduction in drone strikes. She pledges if she becomes president to end American involvement in Afghanistan.
When Chris Matthews asked Gabbard about Biden’s support for the Iraq war, she said, “It was the wrong vote. People like myself, who enlisted after 9/11 because of the terrorist attacks, were lied to. We were betrayed.”
Her moral clarity is rare in the political fog of the presidential circus.
His delusions are dangerous. Tulsi has no clarity -- moral or ethical. I don't give a crap what she said in an interview. I'm getting real tired of the liars for Tulsi -- John Stauber, I'm looking at you right now. You've always had integrity up until lately.
The quote of Tulsi from the article? It's from June. It's from after her June debate. Here it is if you need to stream it.
June 26th she said that. June 26th, US House Rep and Iraq War veteran Tulsi Gabbard, former US House Rep Beto O'Rourke, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Cory Booker, US House Rep Tim Ryan, former US House Rep John Delaney, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, Governor Jay Inslee and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro shared the stage in a debate. The next night, Joe Biden was one of ten Democrats in a debate.
In July, she shared the stage with him. July 31st -- when the stage was occupied by Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet, Kirsten Gilibrand, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, Andrew Yang, Kamala Harris, Jay Inslee, Bill DeBlasio and Joe Biden.
From the August 1st snapshot:
The other big loser? Tulsi Gabbard.
Why was she on the stage?
Yes, she was rarely called on and had little time to speak. That really doesn't make a difference because when she did speak, she repeatedly blew it.
Watching her, with a group of college students, was cringe worthy. I kept my mouth shut during the debate and I waited until all the students had spoken before I shared my opinion.
The group was made up of people who were supporting Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Tulsi Gabbard (one young man was supporting Mike Gravel). No one was hostile towards her going into the debate.
No one was impressed with her after the debate -- not even her supporters -- one of which said that she performed like she thought Joe Biden was going to win the nomination and she was angling to be his running mate on the ticket.
She was bad.
How bad?
Jill Stein bad. In 2012, Jill ran a hideous campaign. One of the worst campaigns I've ever seen. Ava and I noted that in our day-after-the-election piece ["Let the fun begin (Ava and C.I.)"]. Marianne Williamson is ridiculed by some as a 'new age guru.' That's nonsense. She runs like a real candidate, she speaks to real issues. Jill, however, ran in 2012 like a new age guru and I found Tulsi last night to be just as vapid.
When I shared a month or so ago that I hadn't decided who I'd support (I thought that was rather obvious by the statements I'd made all along but I guess it wasn't) e-mails poured in -- to the community e-mail, not the public one, these were community members, not drive-bys to the public account -- insisting that if I was against the wars, I had to support Tulsi because she was.
Tulsi speaks a lot of beliefs that I agree with. In her interviews. In some of her speeches.
But I'm not 19. I've seen nonsense before.
And I saw it last night, repeatedly.
If people went to her website today demanding their donations back, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
She's polling slightly higher -- or was before the debate. Just a tad higher. And she needed to connect. But whomever wore that white pantsuit on stage last night -- the real Tulsi or Tulsi on ambien -- didn't connect.
With Mike Gravel and Tulsi, we're told it's important that they're on the stage in the debates because they will raise real issues. I know Mike and he will -- and did in 2008 when he was on the stage. But Tulsi didn't.
She was supposed to be the anti-war voice. She was on stage with the biggest War Hawk running for the nomination -- Joe Biden.
And she didn't touch him.
And she didn't call out the wars in any significant or meaningful manner.
And the wars were an actual issue. Moderator Jake Tapper brought the topic up and Jake went to more than just two people on this issue. We're using NBC transcript for this debate, by the way.
TAPPER: Thank you, Governor Inslee. I want to
turn to foreign policy, if we can. Senator Booker, there are about
14,000 U.S. services members in Afghanistan right now. If elected, will
they still be in Afghanistan by the end of your first year in office?
BOOKER:
Well, first of all, I want to say very clearly that I will not do
foreign policy by tweet as Donald Trump seems to do all the time. A guy
that literally tweets out that we're pulling our troops out before his
generals even know about it is creating a dangerous situation for our
troops in places like Afghanistan.
And so I
will bring our troops home and I will bring them home as quickly as
possible, but I will not set during a campaign an artificial deadline. I
will make sure we do it, we do it expeditiously, we do it safely, to
not create a vacuum that's ultimately going to destabilize the Middle
East and perhaps create the environment for terrorism and for extremism
to threaten our nation.
TAPPER: Congresswoman Gabbard, you're the only veteran on this stage. Please respond.
GABBARD:
This is real in a way that's very difficult to convey in words. I was
deployed to Iraq in 2005 during the height of the war where I served in a
field medical unit where every single day I saw the high cost of war.
Just this past week, two more of our soldiers were killed in
Afghanistan.
My cousin is deployed to
Afghanistan right now. Nearly 300 of our Hawaii National Guard soldiers
are deployed to Afghanistan, 14,000 servicemembers are deployed there.
This is not about arbitrary deadlines. This is about leadership, the
leadership I will bring to do the right thing to bring our troops home,
within the first year in office, because they shouldn't have been there
this long.
For too long, we've had leaders
who have been arbitrating foreign policy from ivory towers in Washington
without any idea about the cost and the consequence, the toll that it
takes on our servicemembers, on their families. We have to do the right
thing, end these wasteful regime change wars, and bring our troops home.
(APPLAUSE)
TAPPER: Thank you. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Mr.
Yang, Iran has now breached the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal after
President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal, and that puts Iran
closer to building a nuclear weapon, the ability to do so, at the very
least. You've said if Iran violates the agreement, the U.S. would need
to respond, quote, "very strongly." So how would a President Yang
respond right now?
YANG: I would move to
de-escalate tensions in Iran, because they're responding to the fact
that we pulled out of this agreement. And it wasn't just us and Iran.
There were many other world powers that were part of that multinational
agreement. We'd have to try and reenter that agreement, renegotiate the
timelines, because the timelines now don't make as much sense.
But
I've signed a pledge to end the forever wars. Right now, our strength
abroad reflects our strength at home. What's happened, really? We've
fallen apart at home, so we elected Donald Trump, and now we have this
erratic and unpredictable relationship with even our longstanding
partners and allies.
What we have to do is
we have to start investing those resources to solve the problems right
here at home. We've spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of
American lives in conflicts that have had unclear benefits. We've been
in a constant state of war for 18 years. This is not what the American
people want. I would bring the troops home, I would de-escalate tensions
with Iran, and I would start investing our resources in our own
communities.
(APPLAUSE)
TAPPER: Governor Inslee, your response?
INSLEE:
Well, I think that these are matters of great and often difficult
judgment. And there is no sort of primer for presidents to read. We have
to determine whether a potential president has adequate judgment in
these decisions.
I was only one of two
members on this panel today who were called to make a judgment about the
Iraq war. I was a relatively new member of Congress, and I made the
right judgment, because it was obvious to me that George Bush was
fanning the flames of war.
Now we face
similar situations where we recognize we have a president who would be
willing to beat the drums of war. We need a president who can stand up
against the drums of war and make rational decisions. That was the right
vote, and I believe it.
TAPPER: Thank you.
Thank you, Governor. Vice President Biden, he was obviously suggesting
that you made the wrong decision and had bad judgment when you voted to
go to war in Iraq as a U.S. senator.
BIDEN:
I did make a bad judgment, trusting the president saying he was only
doing this to get inspectors in and get the U.N. to agree to put
inspectors in. From the moment "shock and awe" started, from that
moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as
anyone at all in the Congress and the administration.
Secondly,
I was asked by the president in the first meeting we had on Iraq, he
turned and said, Joe, get our combat troops out, in front of the entire
national security team. One of the proudest moment of my life was to
stand there in Al-Faw Palace and tell everyone that we're coming -- all
our combat troops are coming home.
TAPPER: Thank you.
BIDEN: I opposed the surge in Afghanistan, this long overdue -- we should have not, in fact, gone into Afghanistan the way...
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I want to bring in...
INSLEE: Mr. Vice President -- I'd like to comment.
That was Tulsi?
Her whole reason for being on the stage is supposed to be about ending the wars. Get Tulsi on the stage, even her detractor David Swanson has argued, because she's going to be raising the real issues.
Well not only were her remarks above inadequate and, yes, flat out embarrassing -- John Kerry could have made the same remarks in 2004 -- but she blew it.
Not just then. If it was just then, okay, she didn't think on her feet and realized a few seconds after that she should have spoken to the issues strongly.
Okay but Jay Inslee wanted to speak -- see above -- Jake instead went back to Tulsi, went back to her.
TAPPER: I would like to bring in the person on
the stage who served in Iraq, Governor -- I'm sorry, Congresswoman
Gabbard. Your response to what Vice President Biden just said.
GABBARD:
We were all lied to. This is the betrayal. This is the betrayal to the
American people, to me, to my fellow servicemembers. We were all lied
to, told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was
working with Al Qaida, and that this posed a threat to the American
people.
So I enlisted after 9/11 to protect
our country, to go after those who attacked us on that fateful day, who
took the lives of thousands of Americans.
The
problem is that this current president is continuing to betray us. We
were supposed to be going after Al Qaida. But over years now, not only
have we not gone after Al Qaida, who is stronger today than they were in
9/11, our president is supporting Al Qaida.
Oh, shut the f**k up, Tulsi.
Just reliving that moment is enough to piss me off.
Donald Trump is bad, Donald Trump is evil blah blah blah blah blah.
If you're honestly surprised by how Donald has been as a president, you
shouldn't be allowed to vote. Seriously, you are too damn stupid to be
trusted with a ballot. I'm opposed to Donald and I was before he
announced he was running, long, long before.
Joe Biden voted for the war, he sold the war. He lied onstage and Tulsi
safe little go to -- her bulls**t I'm-just-a-girl move -- was to talk
about Donald Trump and al Qaeda. WTF was that, you stupid idiot. I'm
furious. We've noted her here. We've reposted her Tweets on Sunday.
We've never noted much of her from her Congressional office because her
press releases are infrequent and disappointing. I think we've carried
two of her Congressional press releases.
There's a reason for that. And there's a reason that while I could
applaud her earlier statements on the war, I did buy a pass to the Tulsi
train.
She betrayed everyone last night. While I was working out this morning,
I kept telling myself to be nice when I dictated this. Sorry, that's
out the window.
Joe Biden voted for the war, he supported it. He used his position to
silence dissent. And it didn't end there, people. He knew Nouri
al-Maliki was a thug. Unlike Hillary Clinton, he didn't have the guts
to say it publicly, but he knew it. Yet he betrayed democracy and the
people of Iraq as vice president by arguing that the Iraqi people's 2010
vote didn't matter and that Nouri should have a second term even though
they voted against that.
Joe is a disaster.
Mike Gravel would have called him out.
I'm-just-a-girl-standing-on-a-stage-wanting-Joe-Biden-to-like-me was full of s**t.
Did she choke or is that the real Tulsi?
If that''s the real Tulsi, get her off stage, we don't need her. We've
had enough liars pretending that the wars were wrong and needed to be
ended -- hey, Nancy Pelosi, I'm looking at you -- to last a lifetime.
We don't need another.
Jake Tapper specifically brought her back in after Joe lied about his
record, and asked her about Joe's response and she's telling us about
Donald Trump.
I loathe Donald. That's never been a secret. But thus far, Donald has
not gotten the US into a full blown war. I can say that about him.
I have no idea why Tulsi behaved the way she did, but she was an
embarrassment. I don't think she will recover from it. I think that a
lot of people are pretending they didn't see what they saw, for whatever
reason. Read Mike's post (he's very upfront that he thought she did
well but his dad's telling him he's only thinking that because he
already supported Tulsi). But you can only delude yourself for so long
-- unless you're insane. And this is going to gnaw at her supporters.
As far as I'm concerned, unless she's offers some apology/excuse (I was
sick, I got bad news before the debate, etc.), it's over for her.
And it should be.
She was on that stage for one reason only, to seriously address what these wars are costing us.
"We're not able to fight al Qaeda fully" is not why people donated to
her. It's not why they supported her or told their friends about her or
volunteered time on her campaign.
She betrayed everyone. Did she betray herself? I don't know. If the
Tulsi before last night was the real Tulsi then, yes, she betrayed
herself. But, again, I don't know who the real Tulsi is because that
woman on stage is someone I would rip apart day after day right here.
And I've not done that to Tulsi. I've defended her here. When the
nonsense -- which was anti-Hindu -- started about her, I defended her on
that as well.
I'm done.
I'm done and she's done.
She's a fake ass who shouldn't be on the stage.
Don't tell me what crap she said in June when, at the end of July, on the stage with Joe Biden, she gave him a pass. Focus on that and stop whoring.
What did she do next? From the August 2nd snapshot:
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, blew her chances on Wendesday night. Joe Biden's personal handmaiden made that clear in the debate but for those who are a little slow to pick up on reality, she clarified even more on Thursday. THE HILL reports:
Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) defended fellow White House contender Joe Biden after he addressed his record on the Iraq War, an issue that the former vice president faced criticism for during Wednesday’s presidential primary debate.
“He was wrong — he said he was wrong and he has apologized for it more than once,” Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, told Hill.TV on Thursday in response to why she wasn't more critical of Biden over the issue.
She refused to challenge him on stage -- despite all her big dog talk -- and then, after the debate, she went around defending him after the debate.
Quit lying about her. Quit covering for her.
She talked big up until she took the stage July 31st. Then after refusing to challenge Joe in any way on stage, she went around giving interviews where she minimized Joe's actions and pretended he had apologized for his vote -- and his vote was the least of his actions.
She's a fake.
We bought into Nancy Pelosi's nonsense and Harry Reid's. Neither worked to end the Iraq War. Nancy did blame Harry following the 2006 mid-terms. She insisted he was the problem. If she wanted to, she could have ended. She controlled the House. They didn't want to end it though. It had delivered them a huge victory in the mid-terms and now they could use it for the 2008 general election! They fake assed their way and they got away with it.
Now Tulsi is doing the same damn thing and instead of holding her accountable, John Stauber and so many others are trying to pretend she's the voice we need.
What we needed was someone that would have challenged Joe on the stage in that July debate. She failed. It was her one issue and she failed.
Because she's a fake ass.
I don't have time for fake asses. And I don't have time for the whores who pimp them.
David insists:
The war in Iraq ended only nine years ago, but it might as well have never taken place, given the curious lack of acknowledgement in our press and political debates. As families mourn their children, babies are born with irreversible deformities, and veterans dread trying to sleep through the night, America’s political class, many of whom sold the war to the public, have moved on. When they address Iraq at all, they act as though they have committed a minor error, as though large-scale death and destruction are the equivalent of a poor shot in golf when the course rules allow for mulligans.
No, the war did not end, David. Your ability to pay attention to it may have ended. But the war continued. In the last six weeks, we've seen one American service member killed, we've seen another injured and we've seen an American contractor killed (he was in Iraq to remove land mines). We've seen the same government that the US keeps installing fail to deliver for the Iraqi people and instead target them.
That's the real reason US troops are in Iraq -- to prop up the US-installed government. And they have to prop it up because the leader never represents the Iraqi people, it's always some coward who fled Iraq and only returned after the US-led 2003 invasion.
The war didn't end. Your ability to pay attention to it may have. In which case, you're as big a fake ass as Tulsi Gabbard.
The following sites updated:
