Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Discusses Her Secret Meeting With Bashar al-Assad

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Via RealClearPolitics Video:

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), the former Democratic National Committee member who resigned as a result of the feud between party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Bernie Sanders supporters during last year's election, just returned from Syria, where she surreptitiously met with that country's president Bashar al-Assad. She spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper to reveal what happened on her trip.

"Initially I hadn't planned on meeting him," she said about Assad. "Whatever you think about President Assad, the fact is that he is the president of Syria. In order for any possibility of a viable peace agreement to occur, there has to be a conversation with him."

"I'll tell you what I heard from the Syrian people," she continued. "As they were walking down the streets in Aleppo, in Damascus... they expressed happiness and joy at seeing an American walking through their streets. But they expressed a question. They said: 'Why is it that the United States, its allies and other countries, are providing support, are providing arms, to terrorist groups, like al-Nusra, al-Qeeda, ISIS, who are on the ground there, raping, kidnapping, torturing and killing the Syrian people?' Children, men, women, people of all ages."

"They asked me: Why is the United States and its allies supporting these terrorist groups who are destroying Syria when it was al-Qaeda who attacked the United States on 9/11, not Syria?"

"I didn't have an answer for them," she said.

She talked about how nobody knows who the U.S.-supported rebels really are: "Every place that I went, every person that I spoke to, I asked this question to them, and without hesitation, they said there are no moderate rebels. Who are these moderate rebels that people keep speaking of?"

"The Syrian people recognize, and they know, that if President Assad is overthrown, a group like ISIS or al-Qaeda... will take charge of all of Syria."


Also watch Gabbard's video about her trip:

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