Rep. Tulsi Gabbard cast her reluctance to condemn Syrian President Bashar Assad as a byproduct of her military service during the Iraq war. | Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images 2020 Elections Gabbard declines to say whether Assad is a war criminal

Presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) declined Sunday to say whether Syrian President Bashar Assad is a war criminal, and did not answer whether she would trust her own intelligence community if elected commander in chief.

“I think that the evidence needs to be gathered, and as I have said before, if there is evidence that he has committed war crimes, he should be prosecuted as such,” Gabbard told CNN host Dana Bash during a town hall event in Austin, Texas.


The remarks from Gabbard represent the latest entry in what lawmakers from both parties have criticized as a disconcerting posture toward Assad, which emerged when the Aloha State lawmaker made an unannounced visit to the Middle East strongman two years ago.

Gabbard previously said she was "skeptical" that Assad’s government perpetrated a chemical weapons attack in April 2017 that killed dozens of Syrians, although the Defense Department and the United Nations found that his regime was responsible for the slaughter.

Gabbard on Sunday cast her reluctance to condemn Assad as a byproduct of her military service during the Iraq war.

“I served in a war in Iraq — a war that was launched based on lies, and a war that was launched without evidence. And so the American people were duped,” Gabbard said. “So as a soldier, as an American, as a member of Congress, it is my duty and my responsibility to exercise skepticism any time anyone tries to send our service members into harm’s way or use our military to go in and start a new war.”

And when pressed on whether she would accept the conclusions of America’s intelligence agencies as president, Gabbard demurred: “Like I said, we have, in our recent past, a situation where our own government told lies to the American people, and to the United Nations for that matter, to launch a war.”

She added: “It is our responsibility to exercise due diligence, to ask the tough questions, to get the evidence before we make those very costly decisions about how and when and where our military is used."

Gabbard’s town hall was the second of three consecutive ones hosted Sunday night by CNN, between hour-long events for former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and South Bend (Ind.) Mayor Pete Buttigieg.