Editing Nick Rahall (section)

===Foreign policy===
Rahall and another Congressman of Arab descent traveled to Syria and ignored [[State Department]] policy by meeting with Palestinian leader [[Yasser Arafat]], whom Rahall had known for years.<ref name=candidate/> [[Queen Noor of Jordan]] presented Rahall with the first Najeeb Halaby Award for public service.<ref name=candidate/>

Rahall opposed the [[2003 invasion of Iraq]]. Rahall had traveled to Baghdad just before the Iraq War with the intention of convincing Iraqi leaders to allow the U.N. to inspect Iraq's weapons and have access to every site. He said that [[Tariq Aziz]] had accepted all of Bush's demands, and that "Bush said the war was not inevitable, but we now know that wasn't true. Iraqis did allow for complete access but Bush's mind was already made up. Iraqis were damned if they did and damned if they didn't .... We were falsely led into this war."<ref name=WRMEA/>

In 2004, it was reported that Rahall feared that Syria would be attacked by Bush before the November elections. He said that "They're using the same rhetoric against the Syrians they used against Iraqis.... We now have the Syrian Accountability Act. All this despite the State Department's admission that Syria helped us capture key al-Qaeda operatives and helped save American lives." As for Saudi Arabia, Rahall said that the U.S. "wouldn't dare" attack that country: "The Kingdom has been a key ally for decades."<ref name=WRMEA/>