Potential presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul has blamed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's foreign policies for the reign of terror in the Mideast by the Islamic State (ISIS),
according to The Hill.
On Fox News' "America's Newsroom," the Kentucky Republican said about his possible Democrat rival in 2016, "one of the people I blame for a lot of this, frankly, is Hillary Clinton.
"The disaster that is Libya is now a breeding ground for terrorists and also a breeding ground for armament.
"I really do blame Hillary Clinton's war in Libya for creating a lot of the chaos that is now spreading throughout the Middle East."
The libertarian-leaning senator said that her campaign to arm moderate rebels in Syria fighting against President Bashar Assad led to weapons landing in "the hands of ISIS."
He also claimed that Hillary's weak policy on Libya has fueled the crisis in the region.
"I think Hillary's war in Libya and then Hillary's admonition, the president's admonition, and frankly some Republicans' admonition to get involved in the Syrian civil war has actually now created a bigger problem, which is ISIS," Paul said.
Clinton is due to give testimony early this year before a special House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks on the U.S. mission in
Benghazi, Libya, when she was secretary of state.
President Barack Obama has asked Congress to
formally authorize war against Islamic State militants, while saying that the terror group could threaten the U.S. homeland if left unchecked.
In a three-page letter to lawmakers accompanying the request, Obama urged them to "show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat."
But Paul said "the president has to do much more" to defeat ISIS, and added that the United States should consider directly arming Kurdish fighters on the ground to battle the extremists.
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