Republican congressman calls Syrian President Assad ‘the Butcher of Baghdad’ in war geography fail

In a clumsy attempt to attack a non-interventionist congressional colleague, Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger got his war geography mixed up — referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad as “the Butcher of Baghdad”.

In an interview with CNN at the weekend, Kinzinger lashed out at his Democratic House colleague, Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, for her controversial decision to meet with Assad in 2017, but ran into some geography trouble when trying to insult the Syrian president.

Kinzinger said that it was possible for Gabbard to be “against intervention” but “to meet with the Butcher of Baghdad is a whole other thing". Baghdad, of course, is the capital of Iraq, not Syria — but that didn’t seem to matter to Kinzinger or the CNN host, conservative political commentator S.E. Cupp, who seemed eager to condemn Gabbard herself, suggesting that the Hawaii congresswoman was “parroting Assad and Russian propaganda”  for pointing out that the US has taken the side of jihadist militants against Assad in the war-torn country.

During the interview, Kinzinger appealed for stronger US military intervention in Syria to protect the anti-Assad militants in Idlib. The Russian military has estimated that Idlib is about 70 percent controlled by various terrorist groups, including the Al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which were previously known as the Al-Nusra Front.

Ironically, Kinzinger should probably have known that Baghdad was not in Syria, given that he served in the US air force in both Iraq and Afghanistan during his military career.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump urged Russia and Syria not to launch any new offensive against the militant enclave, tweeting that Moscow and Damascus should not “recklessly attack” Idlib province and saying that it would be a “grave humanitarian mistake”.