Thread by @gumby4christ

Tulsi Gabbard is currently assigned to the 351st Civil Affairs Command (351 CACOM), an Army Reserve psyop unit. This same unit was once headed by psyop guru Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, a major Qanon proponent and co-author of "From PSYOP to MindWar" with Michael Aquino.

The Vallely-Aquino paper advocates for aggressive psychological warfare on both the enemy and the American people, primarily by "seizing" the US media as well as by employing "atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves."

The invocation of these latter techniques was, I suspect, a psyop in itself. Nevertheless, not long after the paper was circulated among the military brass (in 1980), Vallely was appointed head of the Army's major psyops unit, 351 CACOM (in 1982).

Vallely, like Gabbard, later became a regular Fox News contributor. During the Iraq War, Vallely was part of a notorious DOD program, he routinely appeared on Fox to boost the war and penned a WSJ op-ed, partially ghostwritten by the Pentagon, to boost the war effort.

Vallely also ran interference for the Bush administration on torture at Guantanamo and Joe Wilson's debunking of the phony yellowcake story while promoting regime change in Syria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

Originally, 351 CACOM was set up to perform elaborate military occupation exercises. Early officers included a reporter, a bank manager, an IBM salesman, the exec director of Big Brothers, the Palo Alto assistant police chief, the mayor of Sonoma and ~12 college professors.

In the Vietnam era, 351 CACOM was introduced to psyop techniques through training exercises in which Reservists set up fake SE Asian governments, which were then targeted by poisoning their water supply, dropping leaflets, and blasting defection pleas via loudspeaker.

In the 80s, during war games, 351 CACOM practiced "messing with" North Koreans by playing an audio "porno tape" over a loudspeaker and dropping leaflets warning that local squirrels carried deadly disease.

"You have to be crazy to be in a PSYOP unit," the unit's sergeant said.

However, 351 CACOM's work has often been subtler, burnishing the US war machine's image with a "humanitarian" gloss: Handing out teddy bears in NATO-ravaged Sarajevo, pumping up Afghan orphans' soccer balls, playing with Philippine kids, giving eye exams to Thai peasants, etc.

In her role at 351 CACOM, Gabbard has engaged in similarly gauzy photo ops, such as this one with some young Qawalangin tribe staff during an IRT program.

In the '70s, 351 CACOM ran ads explicitly recruiting "creative types" to do psyop work in the Army Reserves such as illustrating, news writing, translating, radio, and movie projection. It was, the ad promised, a stepping stone to an "exciting civilian lifetime career."

Given that, it's perhaps notable (or perhaps not) that when Gabbard ran for the Hawaii state legislature in 2002 at the age of 21, she was studying TV production at Leeward Community College. Only a few months after winning the seat, she enlisted in the Hawaii Army Nat'l Guard.

Another maybe-notable item: In 2002, Tulsi's father, Mike Gabbard, founded a war-mongering patriotic organization called Stand Up For America, for which Tulsi worked. A few years later, Vallely started his own org with an eerily similar name, the Stand Up America US Project.

A few people have chimed in to dispute my description of 351 CACOM as a "psyop unit." I give my rationale for that designation here. However...

I'll acknowledge there's a distinction within the military between CA and PSYOP. CA & PSYOP work closely together (and sometimes overlap), but they are separate, with CA focused more on "soft power" techniques. "Influence operation" may be a better term here.