http://russia-insider.com/en/tulsi-gabbard-exposing-lies-perpetuate-washingtons-immoral-wars-she-deserves-our-thanks-and-support

Tulsi Gabbard Exposed the Lies That Perpetuate Washington's Immoral Wars. She Deserves Our Thanks
The congresswoman is a brave person willing to take the criticism for challenging U.S. policies that she believes are wrong.

This article originally appeared at Civil Beat

I served my country for 29 years in the U.S. Army/ Army Reserves and retired as a colonel.  I also served 16 years in the U.S. diplomatic corps in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.  I resigned from the U.S. government 13 years ago in March 2003 in opposition to President Bush’s regime change war on Iraq.

Since my resignation I have traveled to many countries where the U.S. government did not want me to go — to Cuba, Iran, Gaza, Yemen, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and back to Afghanistan. I didn’t agree with many of the policies of the governments in power in those countries. But, I wanted to see the effects of policies of our government, in particular the effects of attempts of regime change.  I wanted to talk with citizens and government officials about the effects of U.S. sanctions on them and whether those sanctions lessened their support for the government the U.S. was attempting to change or overthrow by non-military means.

For making those trips, I have been criticized strongly. I have been called an apologist for the governments in power. Critics have said that my trip has given legitimacy to the abuses of the government. And I have been called a traitor to the United States to dare question or challenge its policy of regime change.

I am not an apologist, nor a traitor … nor is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for her recent trip to Syria and meeting with Syrian President Assad.

It is important that we have representatives in our government who will go to countries where the United States is either killing citizens directly by U.S. intervention or indirectly by support of militia groups or by sanctions.

We need representatives to sift through our government and media reports to find out for themselves the truth, the shades of truth and the untruths.

We need representatives to be willing to take the heat from both their fellow members of Congress and from the media pundits who will not go to those areas and talk with those directly affected by U.S. actions.

We need representatives who will be our eyes and ears to go to places where most citizens can not go.

Tulsi Gabbard is not the first international observer to come back with an assessment about the tragic effects of U.S. support for lethal regime change in Syria. Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire began traveling to Syria three years ago and now having made three trips to Syria — and came back with the same comments — that U.S. support for regime change of the secular government of Syria would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousand of Syrians, the resulting mass migration of millions who are fleeing the carnage of the destruction of the country and the possibility of an extremist religious based group taking power.

U.S. support for regime change in Syria by rebel groups it supports or by ISIS, al-Qaeda, al Nursa, groups that are funded by U.S. allies — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey but ironically that the U.S. is battling in Iraq and Afghanistan — has shown clearly several of the major dangers of international regime change, that groups even worse than the regime being overthrown may come to power.

The possibility of a group imposing perverted extremist religious views on the secular state of Syria is high due to international meddling in the internal affairs of Syria. It has also shown that allies will come to the defense of their friends as the international war in Syria expanded and the deaths of civilians increased as Russia came to the aid of its ally Syria.

During the Obama administration, Congresswoman Gabbard spoke critically of the U.S. propensity to attempt regime change and its resulting chaos and loss of civilian life.  On Dec. 8, 2016, she introduced a bill entitled the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” which would prohibit the U.S. government from using U.S. funds to provide funding, weapons, training, and intelligence support to groups like the Levant Front, Fursan al Ha and other allies of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, al-Qaeda and ISIS, or to countries who are providing direct or indirect support to those groups.

Now in the first days of the Trump administration she traveled to Syria to see the effects of attempted regime change and offer a solution to reduce the deaths of civilians and the end of the war in Syria.  A national organization Veterans For Peace, to which I belong, has endorsed Congresswoman Gabbard’s trip to Syria as a step toward resolution to the Syrian conflict.

The congresswoman is a brave person willing to take the criticism for challenging U.S. policies that she believes are wrong.  I am proud to have her as one of our Congress persons from Hawaii and I urge her to continue to search for the truth about the effect of U.S. government policies.

To Help Refugees, Stop Arming Terrorists

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard

rt.com

Representative Tulsi Gabbard called again for the US to stop aiding terrorists like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, while her guest at the presidential address to Congress, a Kurdish refugee activist, called for an end to the US policy of “regime change in Syria.”
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While many Democrats invited immigrants as their guests for President Donald Trump’s speech to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, hosted Tima Kurdi, whose 3-year-old nephew drowned on the shores of Turkey in September 2015. Photos of Alan Kurdi’s body quickly became the symbol of Syrian refugees’ plight – and led the US to step up efforts to overthrow the Syrian government, actually magnifying their suffering.

On Wednesday, Tima Kurdi joined Gabbard at a press conference on Capitol Hill and called on Trump “to end the regime change in Syria.”

“The most important question is, how do we address the cause of these people fleeing their homes,” said Gabbard, pointing to the bill she submitted in this session of Congress. Her “Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” or HR 608, would ban the use of US taxpayers’ funds to aid terrorist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

“For years, our government has been providing both direct and indirect support to these armed militant groups, who are working directly with or under the command of terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, all in their effort and fight to overthrow the Syrian government,” Gabbard told RT.

Gabbard traveled to Syria in January on a fact-finding mission, meeting with President Bashar Assad. She also visited Aleppo, liberated in December from Islamist rebels led by Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham, a re-branded Al-Qaeda affiliate formerly known as Jabhat Al-Nusra.

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U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI). © Scott AudetteRep. Gabbard calls on US govt to stop ‘supporting terrorists’ after meeting Syria civilians & Assad
The Pentagon’s $500 million effort to train and equip “moderate” Syrian rebels to fight against IS and Damascus met with disaster in 2015, as the majority of the fighters either surrendered or defected to Al-Nusra, with all of their US-funded weaponry. In the end, the program produced only “five or six” trainees, to the consternation of Congress.

With that fiasco in mind, Gabbard propose the first draft of her bill in December 2016. Her subsequent trip to Syria was met with outrage from the US foreign policy establishment and in the mainstream media, who denounced her as “Assad’s mouthpiece.”

Representative Tom Garrett (R-Virginia), a US Army veteran, spoke out in support of HR 608 and said that the goal of US policy in Syria should be peace.

“Tulsi understands that arming the so-called ‘rebels’ in Syria has only led to more bƖσσdshɛd, more suffering, and created more refugees,” Tima Kurdi said in a statement on Tuesday. “A military solution in Syria is not the answer. I hope that President Trump will stop arming terrorists and commit to a political solution in Syria—it is the only way to restore peace.”

https://www.rt.com/usa/379119-tulsi-gabbard-terrorists-syria/