I think her position is foolish, but there is nothing treasonous about it:
There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world. We must take action now to prevent disaster. US/Russia/Ukraine/NATO/UN/EU must implement a ceasefire now around these labs until they’re secured & pathogens destroyed pic.twitter.com/dhDTH5smIG
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 13, 2022
I prefer hawks like Theodore Roosevelt. He and his sons fought, or attempted to fight, in every foreign war in which they touted US involvement. Romney and his sons seem to think they have a special sort of skin that needs preserving. That does not deprive Romney of his right to speak out. It might suggest a certain humility when calling statements by a war veteran treasonous that are clearly not treasonous.
It would not surprise me if there were biolabs in Ukraine funded by the US government, though I am inclined to think such an allegation to be Russian propaganda. I am sure there are biolabs elsewhere funded by the US government, as well as by the Russian government and the Chinese government. Regardless of whether or not there are biolabs in Ukraine, their existence (real or imagined) is not the reason for Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Further, the one thing I woud ask Tulsi Gabbard is this: if such biolabs exist in the Ukraine and are funded by the US government, then why didn’t Putin and his UN ambassador make such a case before the UN Security Council prior to the invasion? Why are they NOW claiming AFTER the invasion started that biolabs are the reason for the invasion?
I like Tusli Gabbard. Pretty girl. Well spoken. Smart. Conservative. But gullible. 🙁
OT, but it should be on the Republican agenda to shut down the federal government’s patronage mill. The amount of grant money distributed to corporations – government, philanthropic, or business should be nil. The amount distributed to persons with institutional addresses should be nil. The federal government’s research programmes should be undertaken by federal employees on salary or by contractors placing sealed bids. If they need to pick the brains of university-based scientists, they can offer term fellowships which include an indemnity to the institution in question to compensate same for the loss of the fellow’s services.
As for our foreign aid programs, I cannot imagine a scenario in which this would legitimate include bioweapons labs.
The federal government sloshes around money with such abandon that the distributions only make sense to insiders looking for a meal ticket and to their patrons. End it, don’t mend it.
Biolabs are quite real– but you can’t roll in and destroy years worth of research into local threats! That’s not quite as good as Putin releasing whatever the local blights are on to the crops, but it’s a close second.
The Russian propaganda is that biolab=> bioweapons. It doesn’t. That’s why a whole like thirty seconds of searching will let you know that you can find BSL-3 labs at state and vet colleges all over the US.
LQC-
They didn’t make a case against the UN because biolabs aren’t illegal.
The accusation of US made bioweapons in states bordering Russia has been tweeted out since 2015…which, given Russia, means that they probably got hard into their bioweapons development at that point.
They’re claiming it as a reason now because 1) they might lose, so time to attempt to genocide Ukraine. Again. and 2) a lot of people just freak out at the word “biolab.”
Look, level 2 is what they do for blood-draw clinics.
Level 3 is flu or staph.
Greenwald is peddling a vicious and invalid ad hominem argument. What’s prudent for the government to do or not do is something on which Romney as a public official is called upon to have an opinion. The answer to that question is never going to turn on Romney’s biography or his son’s biography.
That aside, the essence of his complaint is that Romney did not volunteer for military service. He was excused from military service after 1969 because (1) he had dependent children and (2) he had a lottery number sufficiently high that he would not have been summoned for a physical even if he hadn’t had children. These exemptions were available to anyone from any walk of life. He had a student deferment for two years – one extending from March of 1965 to May of 1966 and once extending from January to December 1969; these would have been available to anyone enrolled in undergraduate tertiary programs, i.e. > 25% of the men in each birth cohort at that time. From May of 1966 to December 1968 he was granted a deferment under a ‘ministerial exception’. These were available to clergymen, divinity students, and missionaries. Any Mormon sent on a mission could obtain one, w/o regard to social class.
Greenwald’s not acknowledging a social reality: most young men who entered the service during those years enlisted, but unless they enlisted in the Army or the Marines, their chance of being sent to VietNam was quite small, as only about 5% of the manpower deployed there was drawn from the Navy or the Air Force. Among the most vulnerable age cohorts (1943-50), about 20% of the young men had a tour in VietNam.
As for Romney’s sons, two of them had dependent children in 2002. A third had a pregnant wife at that time. The treatment of men with dependent children has varied over time, but there has not as a rule been a default expectation that they be in uniform, even during times of general mobilization (and the Iraq War was not that). The only time there was ran from the fall of 1943 to the fall of 1945.
“What’s prudent for the government to do or not do is something on which Romney as a public official is called upon to have an opinion.”
Correct Art. He is not called upon to smear veterans as traitors when they are not traitors.
“The answer to that question is never going to turn on Romney’s biography or his son’s biography.”
His comment during the 2012 campaign that his sons were serving the country by helping him get elected invites an examination of their biographies.
Foxfier, thanks for the clarification.
LCQ-
Welcome, kind of nice to get to explain Thing That Suddenly Everyone Says We Should Be Terrified Of to you, rather than the other way around!
(Another e-friend has been explaining to his family and friends that biolab =/= chemical weapon labs.)
Romney reminds me why I don’t like the Republican business establishment: they are always ready to read you out of society if you don’t know your place.
None of which is to excuse Gabbard’s propagandizing for foreign tyrants. But she is far from alone in this, and far more people run interference for the monster in Beijing.
That said, Foxfier is 100 percent correct, and the distinctions need to be pointed out. As is the fact that none of Putin’s risible casus belli included these labs–and there is no way he was unaware of them. They are only being brought up now because his march to victory has turned into a blood-soaked disaster.
He is not called upon to smear veterans as traitors when they are not traitors.
True. He’s not called upon to smear civilians either. He should probably be circumspect about that for another reason: the Chinese have their tentacles everywhere and there’s a reasonable suspicion the Bidens have been bought. Romney should address that before addressing anything else.
His comment during the 2012 campaign that his sons were serving the country by helping him get elected invites an examination of their biographies.
I don’t remember he said that. A lunkheaded response, all things considered.
He was in an awkward position. Democrats grant their own plenary indulgences on this question, so even if the candidate is an actual draft dodger (that is, someone who engaged in tricks or made use of connections to receive a peculiar dispensation), it’s all good. Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders got a complete pass for their shenanigans. OTOH, Dan Quayle was raked over the coals for his perfectly lawful and orderly National Guard enlistment, with people like Richard Cohen claiming (without evidence) that someone must have interceded for him and the San Francisco Chronicle peddling fictions they made up about it. There have been prominent Republicans with some ‘splain to do in re their service records (Bitc* McConnell and Rudloph Giuliani to name two), but only one (Pat Robertson) was a competitive Presidential candidate. Gullible partisan Democrats claim Donald Trump must have suborned a local podiatrist to lie for him in 1968 when he was awarded a I-Y deferment. They base this on the testimony of the man’s daughters. The trouble is, it beggars belief that (1) a medical man would be so unprofessional as to discuss a patient by name with his daughter, and implicate himself in the process; and (2) that he would remember > 15 years after the fact a banal clinic appointment. Even for a patient, a medical appointment you had for an odd problem at that distance in time might be hazy; practitioners see dozens of patients in a week.
Romney reminds me why I don’t like the Republican business establishment: they are always ready to read you out of society if you don’t know your place.
In fairness to the business establishment, the man who stripped Steve King of his committee assignments is Kevin McCarthy, who has never been employed by a commercial business above and beyond working retail while in school. The hospital administrators who have bounced Paul Church off their attending lists do not work for business establishments either.
Romney appeared at a BLM demonstration. I have to be forgiving of stupid family members who did that (there was one) because that’s family life. (I haven’t any abiding friends who did that). Anyone else is pretty much dead to me.
Why I don’t like the Republican business establishment is that they’re other-directed, fad driven and they cut-and-run at the earliest opportunity, as do their cat’s paws in politics. Exhibit A: Asa Hutchinson.
An interesting not-well-known fact about Mr. 2012 “Surrender-Dorothy” is that the Utah State Republican Party Convention in April 2018 never recommended Mittens for US Senator, Dorothy actually losing in the State party convention referendum 51-49% to state legislator Mike Kennedy, who would’ve been a helluva better Senator.
So, Dorothy was forced into a primary challenge, where enough Blue Jon Huntsman-fan Repubs eventually elected him, given his name recognition and overwhelmingly superior funding.
(winning the Republican primary in Utah is tantamount to election).
Most Utahns would seem that they can’t wait for 2024 should, Dorothy decide to run again—he’ll be 77– (his favorability numbers by very blue Univ of Utah-affiliated public polling sources are equivalent to Biden‘s).
But between the Huntsman millions and the Romney money, and since he has Feinstein disease (lust for eternal power though well beyond shelf-life), the odds are he will want to run again, and enough blue-blue Salt Lake City Leftwing voters may be sufficient to reelect him in the general.
FOXFIER, glad you pointed out the difference between bio research and bio weapons. The quacking drive by media have been pushing the latter. No surprise that “Pierre Delecto” aka Mitt Romney is once again inserting himself into the limelight. He is such a weak man. Makes one wonder what the father son relationship was like when Mitt was growing up. His blatant attack on conservative Democrat Gabbard is low even for him. Remember Hillary obliquely referred to Tulsi Gabbard as a Russian asset. Gabbard called her on it.. Gabbard is a patriot. She deals with facts and understands how dangerous the world situation is. There is a lot that goes on in Congressional hearings that should not be made public unless all the facts are laid out. In this case by the agency that deals with former Soviet bio labs. Those 24 labs should have been closed years ago. A socalled expert named anthrax and botulism as two pathogens. There is a vaccine for the former.