President Obama was only a state senator when ISIS was founded

President Obama was only a Senator when ISIS was founded in 2004 — obvious disproof to Donald Trump&#039;s claims that the terror group was founded by the President.

(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

published 11 August 2016

Donald Trump blasted President Obama on Wednesday for allegedly "founding" the Islamic State, although he later revised his statement to say that Obama was merely a co-founder, working with Hillary Clinton to start the terrorist group. "[Obama] was the founder of ISIS, absolutely," Trump said.

While the claim, taken literally, is ridiculous, it is made even more absurd by the fact that when ISIS was founded in 2004, President Obama was a only a state senator in Illinois. ISIS was actually founded by a native Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who moved to Iraq with funding from al Qaeda's head, Osama bin Laden, to fight America and Britain after the invasion in 2003. The U.S. president at the time was George W. Bush.

By the spring of 2004, the United States finally admitted that it had a full-blown insurgency on its hands that was neither loyal to Saddam Hussein nor, for the most part, even composed of Iraqis. In October 2004, Al-Zarqawi declared himself the "emir" of al Qaeda in Iraq. His group used techniques that were unprecedented in the region for centuries, including terror tactics like the mass beheadings of non-combatant civilians.That same group — the direct followers of al-Zarqawi, along with new fighters from both inside and outside Iraq and Syria— broke from al Qaeda and renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq in late 2006, about four months after al-Zarqawi was killed by a targeted American airstrike. [CNBC]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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