I still can't wrap my head around Tulsi Gabbard's visit to Assad.

[DetlefK]

She said, she went there to ease diplomatic tensions, to prevent the US from being dragged into another war in the Middle-East.

The problem is, she went there in January 2017.

2017.

The US was already involved in the fight against ISIS. The US was already supporting the Kurds. (And the war dragged on and on because ISIS had enough money because Turkey refused to stop ISIS-smugglers at their border. The smuggling between Syria and Turkey didn't stop until Russia went full-on scorched-earth on the border-territory.)





I still can't understand what was the purpose of her visit. What was there to talk about?

She couldn't possibly have mentioned the report Amnesty International wrote about the torture-dungeons of the Assad-regime, where thousands of prisoners have been tortured to death. Assad would have kicked her out of the country.

She couldn't possibly have mentioned the humanitarian work of the White Helmets, a syrian civilian non-governmental organization, because the Assad-regime has branded them terrorists. Assad would have kicked her out of the country.

She couldn't possibly speak for either the Obama-administration or the Trump-administration.

She couldn't possibly expect getting a better overview of the conflict by only talking to biased Assad officials.



So, what was DONE during her visit? Was it a simple photo-op? Did she simply go there for fun or out of a misplaced sense how important she is?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Please let her go. Please don't talk of her unless strictly necessary. 2017 is not news.

[BeyondGeography]

2. +1

This. We need fewer candidates on that stage. Spotlighting her is not a solution.

[Cha]

5. It's callng Vetting.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. At this point only people vetting her are her supporters. Everyone else already declared her FAILED.

[redqueen]

7. Been saying this for weeks.

We used to say 'let it sink' around here.

Well - let her sink

[Cha]

9. Yes, and it's important to know

why she's "FAILED".

[LanternWaste]

8. Like it or not, she's a candidate in the 2020 primary race.

She's going to make news, she's going be news, and we're going to talk about both it and her record as such.

2017 may not be news, but neither is it irrelevant. If and when she sinks, then she sinks; however ignoring problems rarely make them go away.

[IronLionZion]

3. Colluding with him to get Trump to remove US troops

She referred to the US-backed forces as terrorists.

And of course, she shared absolutely nothing with Dem leadership about it and she was caught in plenty of lies: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/26/tulsi-gabbard-bashar-al-assad-syria-democrats

[BeckyDem]

4. Gabbard is complicated, she is not a Russian asset. If she were, our leadership has been

negligent in dealing with her, they're not confining her from any information. But she is also not a dove, she is a bit of a nationalist and that is not a good thing. Gabbard, if you notice, talks about how awful our wars of choice are and she is correct, but she doesn't speak to diplomacy. What are her ideas? I have not heard them because they don't exist. Syria was and is complicated and Assad is a war criminal but she seemed to falsely believe identifying the causes of war was enough to bring peace. She is about as lost as most Republicans are on peace. I do not see her being criticized objectively, people seem to believe some crazy things about her.