From Five Eyes to One Eye

Tulsi Gabbard Would be Disaster as DNI

Courtesy of Donkey Hotey on Flikr

ADDED: When anti-American, anti-Semite psycho Jackson Hinkle applauds your nomination as a “terrific choice,” time to reassess your cuddly relationships with the world’s dictators.

President-elect Donald Trump this week selected former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as his nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI), shocking and appalling many who have served in the intelligence community. It’s not because Gabbard—a politician who went from being a Democrat to joining the Republican party this year—holds many views that are antithetical to what Republicans assert are their values, including her support for abortion (I will remind you that this has nothing to do with my own views, but rather with how she fits with the GOP), her support for a single-payer health care system, her opposition to lowering the corporate income tax as a means to promote economic growth, her support for gun control, and other issues.

Did she change her views prior to switching to the GOP this year? Maybe.

Many people change their political views, and this doesn’t bother me as much as her complete lack of experience in the intelligence community, her uninformed and—yes, I’ll say it—idiotic foreign policy stances, and her flirting with authoritarians from Russian president Putin to Syria’s Assad.

Lack of experience in the intelligence community

Those with whom I’ve spoken about this nomination ask “What’s wrong with Tulsi?” using her first name, as if she was their best friend. They cite her military service as somehow relevant to serving as DNI.

It’s not.

On my last deployment, my duties required me to have a Top Secret clearance. I was deployed for a full year as a member of KFOR 8 with the Virginia National Guard. Like Gabbard, I completed a full tour downrange. Unlike Gabbard, I actually did work on issues that required a clearance.

Gabbard deployed to Iraq and served at Logistical Support Area Anaconda, completing her tour in 2005. She then deployed to Kuwait as an MP, and later transferred to the Army Reserve and deployed to the Horn of Africa to serve as a civil affairs officer.

There’s nothing wrong with any of those deployments or her military service writ large. But it gives her NOTHING as far as intelligence goes. Not a thing.

Most people I know deployed with a Secret clearance, unless their job required a higher level. Maybe she had a TS, having deployed with Special Operations, but that still gives her zero knowledge and understanding of the intelligence community she would be heading.

But let’s forget about the clearance for a moment. This person has no formal intelligence experience, and having her try to learn about this vast, complex community on the fly would endanger our national security.

When I returned from deployment and got hired as an intelligence officer, I had zero experience and had to stop from scratch. I likely was hired because I had an active Top Secret clearance, which was (and remains) in demand. But when I first entered the building, figured out how to log into the system and started exploring, I had to Google. A lot. I had to ask questions. A lot.

As proud as I was of my blue badge, I also realized how little I knew.

What was a portion marking?

What was a declassification block?

Why were some reports considered more sensitive than others?

What was that long string of weirdness at the header and footer of each assessment?

What was the difference between an assessment and fact?

So what is it that these people who cite Gabbard’s military service and naively ask “What’s wrong with Tulsi?” think she’s going to do as the head of a vast, complex intelligence community?

Foreign policy: Putin’s girlfriend

In a recently resurfaced video from 2022, US-designated slimebag propagandist Vladimir Solovyev, referred to Gabbard as “our girlfriend” before introducing a clip in which she tells a confused looking Tucker Carlson that the Biden administration’s goals are to boot Putin out of power via the use of economic warfare, starving the Russian people and destroying Russia’s economy.

The use of “our girlfriend” is not quite right, as it denotes a romantic relationship. In this context “Наша подружка,” means “gal pal” or “buddy.” Regardless, given the atrocities committed by Putin and crew against the Ukrainian populace, I’d be ashamed if a designated Russian regime mouthpiece, who has numerous times threatened more violence and atrocities not just against Ukraine, but also the West, and called on the Huthis to attack US ships, calling for the terrorist groups to receive Russian weapons, was referring to me as “our buddy.”

Hard pass.

And let’s not forget her cozy relationship with Carlson himself—a World War II revisionist, a propagandist so obsequious that Putin himself said he was disappointed with the interview Carlson conducted with him for the softballs he tossed to the Russian dictator. As Kim wrote recently on this site, Tucker Carlson hates the West, and Tulsi Gabbard is more than happy to feed his disdain. with absolute lies.

As I’ve written here numerous times, the goal of sanctions against Russia was not to destroy the Russian economy. Nor was it to starve the Russian people, which even according to Carlson is not happening, given how he drooled over a Russian supermarket during his visit to Moscow.

The goal of our sanctions against Russia was to limit Russia’s access to key inputs and technologies Moscow needs to conduct its war in Ukraine effectively. The architect of the sanctions regime against Russia, Daleep Singh also described the sanctions strategy as five-fold: (1) hit the money, (2) hit the war machine, (3) hit Russia’s participation in the international economic order, (4) degrade Russia’s status as a dominant energy supplier over time, and (5) hit the oligarchs.

So Gabbard doesn’t understand how sanctions against Russia work, nor does she comprehend what the goal of those sanctions is. Since sanctions are a major part of our foreign policy, one would think that the DNI would understand those.

But no…

Gabbard doesn’t even understand why Russia started this war! The day before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she tweeted that Russian aggression is somehow the Biden administration’s and NATO’s fault.

Talk about parroting Russian propaganda!

First, NATO is already on Russia’s border. Estonia and Latvia both border Russia, and they’re both members of NATO. Does Gabbard own a map?

And when the Baltic states joined the alliance, Putin didn’t bat an eyelash, write Robert Person and former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

When NATO announced in 2002 its plan for a major (and last big) wave of expansion that would include three former Soviet republics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—Putin barely reacted. He certainly did not threaten to invade any of the countries to keep them out of NATO. Asked specifically in late 2001 whether he opposed the Baltic states’ membership in NATO, he stated, “We of course are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way.” [emphasis mine]

So Gabbard has not bothered to learn history, instead spends her time on Xitter, spreading Russian propaganda, such as the Russian claims of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine. A few days later, she posted another video on several social media platform, urging neutrality for Ukraine - for the love of Ukrainian people, of course! /sarc

Dear Presidents Putin, Zelensky, and Biden. It’s time to put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love, for the Ukrainian people by coming to an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country—i.e. no military alliance with NATO or Russia—thus...

Let’s remember that Ukraine was already neutral when Putin launched his unprovoked full-scale attack. Let’s also remember that Russia has been funding and supporting the separatists in a war in eastern Ukraine since it illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Does Gabbard understand or remember this? Anyone heading the US intelligence community should. Heck, even Russia knew Ukraine’s “non-aligned” (link in Ukrainian) status, calling on NATO in 2014 to “refrain from provocative statements and respect Ukraine's non-aligned status." [emphasis mine]

Gabbard, apparently didn’t get the memo. Shouldn’t the Director of National Intelligence know at least that much?

And then there was Assad.

Gabbard in 2017 secretly met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and asserted two years later that the accused war criminal was not the enemy of the United States…

…well, except for accusing the United States of controlling “puppets” who called for his resignation after he used chemical weapons against his own people. He then called the chemical attacks on his populace lies and suggested that photographs showing children who had died in the attack on a rebel-held town in Idlib province were staged.

In his AFP interview, Assad accused the West, particularly the United States, of being “hand-in-glove with the terrorists” over the Khan Sheikhoun incident. He claimed details of the attack were made up in order to give the US an excuse to bomb a Syrian airbase in retaliation. “They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack,” he said.

Nope! Not our enemy, right?

From Five Eyes to One Eye

The closest intelligence-sharing relationship we have is what’s called Five Eyes (FVEY). It’s an alliance that comprises the United States, Australia, Canada, UK, and New Zealand. The allies share sensitive intelligence with one another, and our FVEY partners are some of the closest we have.

Does anyone honestly think that our allies with share sensitive information with someone who actively spreads Russian propaganda, doesn’t understand the history of our relations with Russia, why the war in Ukraine began or when, publicly undermines and lies about some of our most powerful foreign policy tools, and snuggles up to a dictator who murdered his own people with chemical weapons?

I doubt we will get any substantive intelligence from our FVEY partners or any other liaison partners with someone this ignorant at the helm. And without information we receive from our closest allies, we’re going to be isolated and much less informed to make effective assessments as Putin continues to hammer the innocent people of Ukraine, as Iran continues to fund regional proxy terrorist groups, and as China continues to steal our sensitive information and undermine our infrastructure.

We won’t be Five Eyes anymore. We’ll be one-eye, floundering without the trust of our closest partners.

Gabbard doesn’t have the knowledge, experience, or instincts to lead our intelligence community. And her ignorance will leave us without critical information we need to defend our nation.