Kaine spends Fourth in Middle East

Sen. Tim Kaine’s trip to the Middle East last week reinforced his concerns about how the U.S. treads in its treatment of the Syrian opposition and limited aid being provided to rebels there.

Kaine and a small group of other senators spent several days in the Middle East, including two in Turkey and Jordan, which border Syria. Turkey has already taken in some 250,000 Syrian refugees, Kaine said, and talks with Turkish and Jordanian leaders were “pretty much Syria all the time.”

Those talks reflected “grave concerns about the character of some of the opposition to [Syrian President Bashar al–Assad], which is increasingly being dominated by forces that are aligned with al-Qaida,” Kaine said in a conference call with reporters Monday.

Even before the trip, Kaine, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, “certainly had a concern about the complexity of the decisions we have to make in Syria,” he said.

“We need to very carefully vet who we support and the kinds of support we provide,” Kaine said.

“I felt like it was a complex situation before I went there it was made plain that they view it, as next-door neighbors, as equally complex.”

Kaine and the other senators also made a quick Fourth of July stop with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where they said they were briefed by military officials, and he spent some time barbecuing with Virginia soldiers. The senators also stopped at a military hospital in Germany that treats wounded U.S. soldiers.

Overall Kaine called the trip “a really wonderful opportunity” and a timely one, given rising tensions in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

“It was a good time to go and I learned a lot,” Kaine said, adding that he will “go back to Washington armed with more information.”

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