Republican presidential candidate Senator Rand Paul says the hawkish members of his party are responsible for the creation of the ISIL Takfiri terrorists in the Middle East.

Paul blamed hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham for the creation of ISIL, saying the group “exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS (ISIL).”

Talking to MSNBC on Wednesday, Paul said, “These hawks also wanted to bomb [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, which would have made ISIS’ job even easier. They’ve created these people.”

Senator Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said formerly that he advocated sending around 10,000 US troops to Iraq to help train and support militants fighting ISIL. report presstv

Graham is expected to announce his White House bid next Monday.

“Right now there are 1,500 groups, many of them bad people, including ISIS, that hawks in our party have been arming,” Paul noted.

The US and its allies have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria since last year. However, the terror network is controlling large parts of the two countries.

The terrorists managed to capture Ramadi, the capital city of Iraq’s Anbar Province, last week.

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

SB/AGB