Gabbard meeting with #Assad draws disgust from fellow lawmakers

Another prominent dictatorship groupie. 

'Gabbard meeting with Assad draws disgust from fellow lawmakers'

'Democrats and Republicans appear equally rattled at Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's decision to meet this month with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

“There's a pretty unanimous feeling of shock and disgust,” said a Democratic aide who works on national security issues. “Everybody I've talked to on both sides of the aisle, I think people are just stunned.”

Republicans appeared more willing than Democrats to go on the record in ripping

Gabbard (D-Hawaii), an Iraq War veteran and a prominent member of both the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.

“An elected official, a representative of the United States, went on a secret trip to meet with the brutal dictator who had murdered nearly half a million of his own people –– it's reprehensible and cannot be justified,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), another Iraq War veteran, said Thursday in an email.
“The actions of Congresswoman Gabbard have put our nation's reputation and foreign policy concerns at high risk and I couldn't be more disgusted.”

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is also seething.

“Assad has exterminated hundreds of thousands of Syrians,” a committee spokesman said Thursday. “This trip was not authorized by the committee, and it was just wrong.”

Rep. Eliot Engel (N.Y.), the senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel, offered a similar rebuke of Assad in a statement that did not explicitly criticize Gabbard or her decision to meet with Assad.

"Mr. Engel's position on Assad is well established: he's a war criminal and a murderer, he has supported and benefitted from terrorism, he has close ties to Russia, and he cannot have a role in Syria's future," spokesman Tim Mulvey said in an email.'