Gabbard: ‘We need to learn from Iraq’A
UNITED STATES - OCTOBER 1: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, attends a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere hearing in Rayburn Building, October 1, 2014, on Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi who is imprisoned in Mexico. Tahmooressi, who suffers from PTSD, has been held in Mexico since being arrested in March for carrying guns across the border. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
AGENDA 21 RADIO
BY PAUL PRESTON
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has a message for the liberals attacking her criticism of President Trump’s missile strikes on Syria, warning that a rush to aggression risks repeating the same mistakes that led the United States into the Iraq War.
“We need to learn from Iraq and Libya –– wars that were propagated as necessary to relieve human suffering, but actually increased human suffering many times over,” she said in an email to The Hill.
The Hawaii Democrat, who served two tours in Iraq, has been highly critical of Trump’s decision last Thursday to launch 59 missiles into a Syrian airfield in response to a deadly chemical attack that killed scores of civilians, including children, in a western Syria town days before.
The Trump administration says the chemical attacks were initiated by Syrian President Bashar Assad –– a charge Damascus denies –– and congressional leaders from both parties have endorsed the president’s response.
Gabbard’s position –– particularly her skepticism that the Syrian government was behind the chemical attacks –– has led to an outcry from some establishment Democrats, including former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who want her out of Congress.
A meeting between Gabbard and Assad in January has only heightened the critics’ belief that she’s acting as an apologist for a tyrannical leader known to employ brutal tactics, even against his own people, to keep a grip on power.
But Gabbard, who sits on both the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, maintains those critics are ignoring the lessons of recent history that have left the United States mired in costly Middle Eastern conflicts for more than a decade.
“I and thousands of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms went to war in Iraq based on false intelligence and lies from our leaders –– our president, military and political leaders. We should have been skeptical then, and we weren’t,” she said. “The cost was thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars down the drain. What to speak of millions of non-American lives.”
Echoing the position of other liberal Democrats, Gabbard says the administration is conducting an unconstitutional war because Trump didn’t come to Congress before launching the strikes. Going a step further, she’s also questioning the veracity of Trump’s claim that Assad is responsible for the chemical attacks.
“There is a reason our Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war: we should be shown the evidence and given the opportunity to debate the strategy and sacrifice expected,” she said.
“No leader –– of either party, pro or against military intervention –– should let our President take us down the path to another regime change war without that debate.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who backed the U.S. strikes, is urging GOP leaders to cut short Congress’s long spring break to bring the House back into session to stage such a debate.
Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) has rebuffed that request, though the Republican leader is also calling on Trump to confer with Congress about a future course in Syria.
“It is now appropriate for the administration to consult with Congress as it considers next steps to resolve the long-running crisis in Syria,” Ryan saidFriday.
The House is scheduled to reconvene on April 25.
Thank You Tulsi …
No Gabby, we NEED to learn from (or admit TO) the False Flag of 9/11. The US has murdered over 1 million people based on a fraud, and we’re ramping up for WW3 on another False Flag.
PERHAPS if we ever got to the truth, this nonsense would stop, but for all intents and purposes, you’re running a CIA-like Limited Hangout Operation.
~ Occams
We did learn from Iraq.
We killed their people and now we are better prepare to kill more.
THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
ISIS AIRFORCE -1
We need to learn from Waco!
The Clintons are the ones who have committed genocide. On 19 April, President Clinton killed those 80+ USA citizens in the Branch Dividian Waco church with CS poison gas that is so toxic that the military are not allowed to use it in battle. The CS gas turns into hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide when heated as it was by the ATF started fire in their church. When people are poisoned by hydrogen cyanide their muscles contract breaking their back. That’s why the dead little children at Waco were found bent backwards. That is a horrible way for children to die.
If Trump’s daughter is so worked up by children dying by a poison gas attack, then prosecute the head of a country who gassing their own people, prosecute Bill Clinton. Trump called these guys ‘good people’. Clinton killed 80+ American citizens to satisfy the ‘Cult Awareness Network’. BTW, the ISIS supporting White Helmets, supported by Uncle Sam, had the sarin gas and were the ones who were the primaries involved in the chemical weapons attacks.
Yes, indeed.
But just as stupid people do not learn from experience, arrogant and greedy and violent people also do not learn.
“Arrogant and greedy and violent” is pretty much a good concise description of today’s American establishment.
I really do not see how that can change in a country whose government has been called, accurately, the best that money can buy.
I like a lot of what Tulsi Gabbard says, but I feel confident in declaring her another Ralph Nader.
Those are not the kind of people who have even a remote chance at power.
Sorry, but America is dismal place to many outside observers.