WaPo Publishes Gabbard Smear Piece Filled With Blatant Lies by Caitlin Johnstone!
(2019-08-02 at 21:19:45 )

WaPo Publishes Gabbard Smear Piece Filled With Blatant Lies by Caitlin Johnstone

The Washington Post, which is wholly owned by a Central Intelligence Agency contractor who is reportedly working to control the underlying infrastructure of the global economy, has published a shockingly deceitful smear piece about Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard in the wake of her criticisms of her opponent Kamala Harris prosecutorial record during the last Democratic debate.

The articles author, Josh Rogin, has been a cheerleader for United States regime change interventionism in Syria since the very beginning of the conflict in that nation.

It is unsurprising, then, that he reacted with orgasmic exuberance when Ms Harris retaliated against Ms Gabbards devastating attack by smearing the Hawaii congresswoman as an "Assad apologist", since Ms Gabbard has been arguably the most consistent and high-profile critic of Mr. Rogins pet war agenda. His article, titled "Tulsi Gabbards Syria record shows why she can not be president", is one of the most dishonest articles that I have ever read in a mainstream publication, and the fact that it made it through The Washington Posts editors is enough to fully discredit that outlet.

You can read Rogins smear piece without giving Jeff Bezos more money by clicking here for an archive. There is so much dishonesty packed into this one that all I can do is go through it lie-by-lie until I either finish or get tired, so let us begin:

"Ms Gabbard asserts that the United States (not Assad) is responsible for the death and destruction in Syria, that the Russian airstrikes on civilians are to be praised"

This is just a complete, brazen, whole-cloth lie from Mr. Rogin. If you click the hyperlink he alleges supports his claim that Ms Gabbard asserts "Russian airstrikes on civilians are to be praised," you come to a 2015 tweet by the congresswoman which reads, "Bad enough United States has not been bombing al-Qaeda-al-Nusra in Syria. But it is mind-boggling that we protest Russias bombing of these terrorists."

Now, you can agree or disagree with Ms Gabbards position that the United States should be participating in airstrikes against al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, but there is no way you can possibly interpret her acceptance of Russia doing so to be anywhere remotely like "praise" for "airstrikes on civilians". There is simply no way to represent the content her tweet that way without knowingly lying about what you think it says. The only way Mr. Rogins claim could be anything resembling truthful would be if "al-Qaeda" and "civilians" meant the same thing. Obviously this is not the case, so Mr. Rogin can only be knowingly lying.

"That bias, combined with her long record of defending the Assad regime and parroting its propaganda, form the basis for the assertion Ms Gabbard has -embraced and been an apologist for- Mr. Assad, as Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) said Wednesday post-debate on CNN."

Ms Gabbard has no record whatsoever of "defending the Assad regime".

This is a lie.

There exist copious amounts of quotes by Ms Gabbard opposing United States regime change interventionism in Syria and voicing skepticism of the narratives used to promote said interventionism, but there are no quotes anywhere in which she claims Mr. Assad is a nice person or that he has not done bad things.

If such quotes existed, Mr. Rogin would have included them in his smear piece. He did not. All he can do is lie about their existence.

"To repeat: There is no quote in which Tulsi praises, supports, or otherwise -apologies for Mr. Assad," journalist Michael Tracey recently tweeted with a link to his January article on the subject. "I checked the record a long time ago, and it does not exist. This is just a smear intended to delegitimize diplomatic engagement"

"Claiming that politicians are -defending- objectionable rulers they meet with, in pursuit of achieving some alternative to war, is a tired trope that has been frequently used throughout history to discredit diplomatic engagement," Mr. Tracey wrote.

"As Ms Gabbard told me in an interview shortly after returning from Syria: -The reason why I decided to take this meeting on this trip was because if we profess to care about the Syrian people - if we really truly care about ending their suffering and ending this war - then we should be ready to meet with anyone if there is a chance that that meeting and that conversation could help to bring about an end to this war."

Ms Gabbard has been remarkably consistent in explaining her position that she opposes United States regime change interventionism in Syria because United States regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous.

This is not "defending" anyone, nor is it "parroting propaganda". It is an indisputable, thoroughly established fact.

"Other Democratic candidates have promised to end United States military adventurism without making excuses for a mass murderer. It is neither progressive nor liberal to defend Mr. Assad, a fascist, totalitarian psychopath who can never peacefully preside over Syria after what he has done."

Again, claiming that Ms Gabbard has done anything at all to "defend Assad" is a lie.

If anything Ms Gabbard has been too uncritical of establishment war propaganda narratives, calling Mr. Assad "a brutal dictator" who has "used chemical weapons and other weapons against his people." Ms Gabbards sole arguments on the matter have been in opposition to United States military interventionism and skepticism of narratives used to support such interventionism, which only an idiot would object to in a post-Iraq invasion world.

Mr. Rogin argues that it is possible to end United States military adventurism without defending and making excuses for Mr. Assad, yet this is exactly the thing that Ms Tulsi Gabbard has been doing since day one.

Which means Mr. Rogin does not actually believe it is ever okay for any presidential candidate to want to end United States military adventurism under any circumstances.

Which is of course the real driving motivation behind his deceitful smear piece against Ms Gabbard.

"Ms Gabbard never talks about her other trip - to the Turkish-Syrian border with a group of lawmakers in June 2015, when she met with authentic opposition leaders, victims of Mr. Assads barrel bombs and members of the volunteer rescue brigade known as the White Helmets.

Their stories, which do not support Mr. Assads narrative, never make it into Ms Gabbards speeches on the campaign trail."

This one is bizarre.

Mr. Rogin says this as though Ms Gabbards meeting with Mr. Assad is something that she brings up "on the campaign trail" rather than something war propagandists like himself bring up and force her to respond to.

The fact that those propagandists never bring up Ms Gabbards meetings with the Syrian opposition is an indictment of their bias, not hers.

The mental gymnastics required to make Ms Gabbards meetings with all sides of the Syrian conflict feel more pro-Assad rather than less deserve an Olympic gold medal.

Obviously Ms Gabbard having met with all sides is indicative of an absence of favoritism, not the presence of it.

The fact that she did not come away from her meetings with empire-allied opposition forces with the opinion that the United States should help storm Damascus does not mean she supports any particular side.

"Ms Gabbards candidacy should be taken very seriously - not because she has a significant chance of being president, but because her narrative on Syria is deeply incorrect, immoral and un-American. If it were adopted by her party and the country, it would lead the United States down a perilous moral and strategic path."

Saying a "narrative" can be "un-American" is a fairly straightforward admission that you are authoring propaganda.

Unless you believe your nation has one authorized set of narratives, a narrative can not be "un-American".

This is as close as you will ever get to an admission from Mr. Rogin that United States power structures work to control the dominant narratives about world events, and that he helps them do it.

To such a person, opposition to your narrative control agendas would be seen as the antithesis of the group you identify with.

The United States empire has an extensive and well-documented history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to initiate military conflicts which advantage it.

To continue to deny this after Iraq is either willful ignorance or propaganda.

The fact that Mr. Rogin adds "strategic path" to his argument nullifies his claim that his position has anything to do with morality.

If your foreign policy concern is with strategic leverage, you will naturally try to interpret anything which advances that strategic path as the moral choice.

"Listening to Ms Gabbard, one might think the United States initiated the Syrian conflict by arming terrorists for a regime-change war that has resulted in untold suffering."

This is exactly what happened.

The United States armed extremist militants with the goal of effecting regime change, and before Russia intervened they almost succeeded.

According to the former Prime Minister of Qatar, the United States and its allies were involved in this behavior from the very beginning of the conflict in 2011.

Here is a link to an article full of primary source documents showing that the United States and its allies had been scheming since well before 2011 to provoke a civil war in Syria with the goal of regime change.

They did exactly what they planned to do, which is exactly the thing Mr. Rogin claims they did not do.

But Ms Gabbard never even takes her analysis this far. She simply says the United States should not get involved in another United States regime change war, because it should not.

"Responding to Ms Harris, Ms Gabbard called Mr. Assads atrocities -detractions,- [sic] before eventually saying she does not dispute that he is guilty of torture and murder. That is a slight improvement from her previous protestations that there was not enough evidence."

Mr. Rogin falsely implies here that Ms Gabbard only just began accusing Mr. Assad of war crimes, and that she only did so in response to new pressure resulting from Ms Harris criticism.

As noted earlier, this is false; Ms Gabbard has been harshly critical of Mr. Assad.

"Ms Gabbard then quickly accused President Trump of aiding al-Qaeda in Idlib. -That does sound like a talking point of the Mr. Assad regime, CNNs Anderson Cooper said. He could have just said she is wrong."

Even the United States State Department has acknowledged that Idlib is an al-Qaeda stronghold, and the President Trump administration has taken aggressive moves to prevent the Assad coalition from launching a full-scale campaign to reclaim the territory.

Claiming that this did not happen is a lie per even the accepted narratives of the United States political-media class.

"Ms Gabbards 2017 trip was financed and run by members of a Lebanese socialist-nationalist party that works closely with the Assad regime."

Former United States Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who accompanied Gabbard on this trip, dismissed this accusation as "so much horseshit I can not believe it."

All parties involved have denied this narrative, which Mr. Rogin has played a pivotal role in promoting from the very beginning and to which he has been forced to make multiple embarrassing corrections.

"Ms Gabbards plan to overtly side with Assad and Russia while they commit crimes against humanity would be a strategic disaster, a gift to the extremists and a betrayal of decades of United States commitments to stand up to mass atrocities. Democratic voters who believe in liberalism and truth must reject not only her candidacy but also her attempt to disguise moral bankruptcy as a progressive value."

Another lie; Ms Gabbard has no such plan.

Opposing United States regime change interventionism is not "siding" with anybody, it is just not supporting a thing that is literally always disastrous and literally never helpful.

Mr. Rogins closing admonishment to reject not just Ms Gabbard but her skepticism of United States war narratives is yet another admission that he is concerned with narrative control here, not with truth and not even really with a United States presidential candidate.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world, and shameless war propagandists like Mr. Josh Rogin are the attack dogs of establishment narrative control.

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