Tulsi Gabbard's Speech at the Manama Dialogue

The 21st Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, an annual global security and geopolitical conference

As longtime Gym readers know, Americans are seldom the main article topic, but the content of Tulsi Gabbard’s speech yesterday, 31 October, at the IISS (International Institute for Strategic Studies) Manama Dialogue 2025 in Manama, Bahrain, warranted such treatment. For those unaware, Ms. Gabbard is the current Director of National Intelligence for the Outlaw US Empire:

The DNI serves as the head of the U.S. Intelligence Community, overseeing and directing the implementation of the National Intelligence Program (NIP). The DNI also acts as the principal advisor to the president, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security.

It was hoped that Ms. Gabbard would put an end to the gross feeding of misleading and false intelligence to the President as was clearly the case over the last eight years. However, given the actions of President Trump, it appears she’s been far from successful in that regard. And given Trump’s foreign policy since he began this term, beware drinking any sort of beverage while engaged in reading her speech—don’t drink and read at the same time!! Here’s the official transcript:

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard

Transcript of Remarks

IISS Manama Dialogue 2025

Manama, Bahrain

October 31, 2025

Thank you, distinguished guests, excellencies, friends, and fellow peacemakers. It’s a privilege to join all of you here this evening. Your Highness, thank you very much for your kind hospitality and welcoming us in hosting this important event. To IISS and your team, thank you for yet again putting on a phenomenal dialogue. It’s an honor to be able to address you here in the Kingdom of Bahrain at this pivotal time in global history.

As we gather here, we’re reminded that true security, true stability, and peace cannot be forged in isolation, but in the common collection of peacemakers working towards that common purpose. Today, I want to speak plainly for myself as a veteran and a soldier who has seen firsthand the high cost of war. As someone who serves under President Trump’s leadership, I have experienced the promise of peace. His vision is about delivering real wins, not just for America, but for our collective cause of peace and prosperity, and doing so through a very principled realism, rooted in shared goals, interests, and values.

The old Washington way of thinking is something we hope is in the rear-view mirror and something that has held us back for too long. For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building. It was a one-size-fits-all approach of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervening in conflicts that were barely understood, and walking away with more enemies than allies. The result: trillions spent, countless lives lost, and in many cases, a creation of greater security threats, the rise of Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS.

We’ve heard President Trump and Vice President Vance speak just last week about their hope that the Abraham Accords will continue to grow and expand to allow for a true lasting regional stability and peace. This is what President Trump’s America First policy looks like in action, building peace through diplomacy, with an understanding that there cannot be prosperity without peace. President Trump de-escalated tensions on the Korean peninsula through direct talks. During his first term in office, he opened lines of communication with North Korea that had been frozen for generations. He did what no other president had been willing to do: engage directly to speak about peace. He restored American leadership abroad. He brokered economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, promoting stability and peace in the Balkan region.

And now just nine months into his second term, President Trump’s America First agenda is supercharging these efforts and securing peace on a scale that we haven’t seen in decades. He secured ceasefires between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, a peace agreement between Rwanda and the DRC, a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Thailand, and averted conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. As was mentioned previously, and is very much in focus for so many of us, he negotiated the release of all living hostages from Hamas. While fragile, a historic ceasefire and peace plan is moving forward. It is doing so with integral support from many of our partners here in this room.

So, what ties all of this together? A simple and revolutionary idea: Pursue joint interests. Find those win-win solutions where they align and recognize that yes, we will have differences and we will work through them.

President Trump understands that not everyone shares our exact values or our system of governance, and that’s okay. What’s most important is finding where our shared common ground exists and building those partnerships and progressing on those common grounds. Things like energy independence that stabilizes global markets, things like countering terrorism, something that continues to grow in different parts of the world, strengthening trade partnerships to boost economic growth and innovation. These are the components, the glue of enduring partnerships and friendships. So, America First is not about isolating ourselves. As President Trump has shown, it’s about engaging in direct diplomacy, being willing to have conversations that others are not willing to have, and finding that path forward where our mutual sovereign interests are aligned.

And that’s really why we’re all gathered here today in Manama. We can commit to this path ourselves and put it into action with Bahrain’s own leadership. Year after year, hosting these critical dialogues shows us the way forward, convening nations from around the globe, amplifying shared stakes and strengthening partnerships and lines of communications that allow us to resolve our differences and deliver results for our respective people.

Under President Trump, the United States is your partner in executing this vision as a deal maker who is committed to peace. And together we look forward to continuing this path towards peace, to ending wars that have defined too many generations, unlocking prosperity for millions, and helping support the future of a Middle East where security is a dividend of cooperation, not a cost of conflict.

Thank you very much. God bless you. God bless the pursuit of peace. [My Emphasis]

Yes, I ceased adding emphasis because almost the entire production merits it. Now you know why I warned against drinking while reading. As readers likely surmised, this was provided to show the lengths of propagandistic duplicity US officials from the Duopoly will go—the number of lies are stupendous. How many has Trump extrajudicially executed over the last month, and that’s the “values” of a “peacemaker”?! The Abraham Accords aren’t designed to obtain peace in Palestine. What was the bombing of Iran and Yemen supposed to be? Bombing people to Peace?! Support for the ongoing Genocide in Palestine by Trump’s Zionist friends is peaceful?! Threatening Lebanon with disintegration should it not obey the diktat of Trump is peaceful?! Doing away with regime change as a policy when that’s the announced reason for the US Navy deployment off Venezuela’s shores? “A way of thinking … that has held us back for too long.”?!? Is she tossing out the Wolfowitz Doctrine or saying the #1 policy goal of Full Spectrum Domination have been dumped? What was the most recent thing said by Department of War—not Department of Peace—head Pete Hegseth about both Russia and China: They are “existential threats.” Sounds like peace is really a priority with that one—a Carthaginian Peace most likely (although he probably doesn’t know what that means). If Ms. Gabbard believes the tripe she slung from her podium at the conference, what are we to think not only of her but of Outlaw US Empire policy?

I could write more but there isn’t much point in doing so. I could cite “A Clean Break” and subsequent events to further denigrate Ms. Gabbard’s words. Perhaps she thinks she can alter US policy by herself. Promoting “an understanding that there cannot be prosperity without peace” is something that’s sorely needed to be pounded into the heads of US Neoliberal/Neocon elites, although they look at their personal prosperity over the past decades of forever wars and ask why should we change course. The past 45 years of policy has enriched those people in ways they never dreamed possible at the outset. In other words, their polices are peachy keen with them; they’re not suffering whatsoever. Who of them cares if SNAP benefits stop flowing? As Mark Sleboda said so painfully today in his chat with Nima, Outlaw US Empire foreign policy takes a heavy toll on US domestic policy and is why the Empire is so deeply in debt and so heavily deindustrialized. The great majority of Americans don’t make the connection between what happens “Over there” with what “Happens here.”

I’m going to close with a comment I made at Simplicius’s article, “Trump-Xi Face Off for All the Marbles in South Korea,” that recaps a small portion of my previous 70 years:

Recall Dr. Hudson’s dicta: “Debts that can’t be repaid won’t be repaid.” And “Most ‘wealth’ is ‘debt’” So, when the debt evaporates--defaults--the wealth follows it--poof! The postage stamp example: When I was born in 1955 a regular 1st Class letter cost 3 cents and a postcard 2 cents, while today it’s 78 cents and 61 cents, respectively, More:

“$1 in 1955 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $12.09 today, an increase of $11.09 over 70 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.62% per year between 1955 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 1,108.87%.

“This means that today’s prices are 12.09 times as high as average prices since 1955, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 8.271% of what it could buy back then.” https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1955?amount=1

And of course, we know how accurate the government’s rate of inflation report is. The postal measure says costs are 30X higher today than in 1955. Your basic new Ford car cost $1600 in 1955 while today the average new car price in Outlaw US Empire is $49,000. Service industry jobs can’t afford modern things or new houses or gentrified apartments. The lamentation Billy Joel voiced in “Allentown” has escalated. Just as Herbert Hoover had no cure at the Great Depression’s outset, Trump has no solution for the accelerating decline of the Outlaw US Empire that he’d be allowed to implement if he were so inclined, which he isn’t.

All Trump can do is to follow his orders, and peacemaking isn’t one of those.

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