Jennifer Burke over at the Tea Party News Network is spreading the rumor that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has "seized and gained control of the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) that were stockpiled by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein."
This shocking news raises #SoManyQuestions. Considering that our rationale for going into Iraq in the first place was to find and destroy Saddam's WMDs (or was it that Saddam was working with al Qaeda?), why have we never heard about this before? Wouldn't Bush have announced finding WMDs if they were there? Or is ISIS better at finding WMDs than the American Military?
Burke goes on to claim that "Like it or not, George W. Bush has now officially and forever been completely vindicated." Really? Because it seems like he left WMDs in the country we occupied for eight years. Why were there still chemical weapons in Iraq for them to seize?
The simple answer is that there aren't, or at least not usable ones. To be fair, reading the article from the Telegraph that is apparently Burke's source (she doesn't provide a direct link), it would be easy to think that this is a valid interpretation. The article by Damien McElroy starts:
"The jihadist group bringing terror to Iraq overran a Saddam Hussein chemical weapons complex on Thursday, gaining access to disused stores of hundreds of tonnes of potentially deadly poisons including mustard gas and sarin."
However, like the Wall Street Journal article on the same topic, it goes on to explain that these weapons had already been accounted for and were determined to be unusable by U.N. inspectors prior to the 2003 invasion. In fact, the quotations Burke uses contradict her commentary on them by making this exact point!
Burke's article has been shared by thousands of people, which gives a little insight into how false beliefs are spread through the movement, but this also raises a more serious question:
If terrorism operates by spreading fear, should we really be helping ISIS out by spreading rumors that they now have chemical weapons?
