printHawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is an Iraq War veteran, who serves on Armed Services Committee. She is also a Democrat, which usually comes with the presumption of asininity. This woman, however, is not a complete ass. Here she touches on some of the themes of my current WND column as to why the Iraqi military would not fight, although she eventually stalls:
WOLF BLITZER: Because you make a good point. There’s – the Kurdish fighters, they have their own separate militia. The Sunni – Iraqi Sunni fighters, they have their own separate militia. There’s the Iraqi Shia. They’re largely backed by Iran. They have their own separate militia. They’re all pretty – pretty dedicated. The weakest link seems to be the central Iraqi army, which the defense secretary of the United States says simply has the – lacks the will to fight, yet the United States keeps supporting that weakest link, the central military of Iraq. That’s a problem from your perspective, isn’t it?
REP. TULSI GABBARD (D), HAWAII:: Yes, Wolf, it is a problem for a few different reasons. One is, this is a strategy that’s proven to have failed, not only recently, but really even through the Bush administration when we had Maliki in charge, we were providing weapons and money and resources to this Shiite-led government that persecuted the Sunnis, completely left them out, and really created the situation that we see today where you have ISIS taking advantage of the oxygen that this policy has created where the Sunni tribes essentially have been driven into the arms of ISIS for protection. This is the problem that I see with the current offensive that’s happening right now heading into Ramadi. This is being led by the Shia militia who named this offensive attack a name that is extremely incendiary and offensive specifically to the Sunni tribes. So this is only going to make the sectarian divides deepen. This will make matters worse. And ultimately, again, this will push the Sunni tribes closer and closer into ISIS’ arms, at the end of the day strengthening ISIS rather than defeating them.
For the rest, she’s an energetic interventionist, so a bit of an ass after all. But then so are most Republicans.