Assad is ‘evil, beyond brutal, not rational,’ US State Department says
Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland sounds off on Syrian president
Syrian President Bashar Assad is “evil,” “inhumane” and unfit to rule, the US State Department spokeswoman said Monday, heaping invective on the Syrian dictator.
“He certainly should leave power. He is beyond brutal. It is inhumane what he has done to his own people,” Victoria Nuland said a day after Assad delivered a defiant speech regarding the war between his troops and rebels seeking to overthrow the dictator.
Asked whether the State Department considered Assad a “rational actor,” Nuland answered, “I don’t think anybody who has – is guilty of the kinds of crimes against your own people that he’s guilty of can be considered rational by any human sense of the word.”
Nuland said Assad’s government “bears fundamental responsibility, which speaks to the completely callous attitude that he took in this speech, just completely ignoring the fact that at any moment he could silence his own guns and that would completely change the situation on the ground.”
Asked whether the US government considers Assad evil, Nuland said, “I personally consider what he’s done evil.”
