PolitiFact Forced To Pull Rating Of John Kerry’s ‘Mostly True’ Claim On Chemical Weapons In Syria

You KNOW it’s bad when a fact-checking website is forced to backtrack for completely sucking at fact-checking and taking a progressive politician’s words at face value.

Back in 2014, then-Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that the Obama administration totally and completely got “100 percent of the chemical weapons out” of Syria. Gone. Done, son. He wasn’t the only Obama administration official to make that claim *coughSusanRicecough*, but that’s the specific statement PolitiFact decided to examine.

In a post titled, “Revisiting the Obama track record on Syria’s chemical weapons,” PolitiFact admits that its prior “Mostly True” rating is utter garbage. And that’s putting it mildly.

Syria had agreed in 2013 to an ambitious program to destroy its chemical stockpiles under international supervision, as part of a deal brokered by Russia. When Kerry spoke in July 2014, the process seemed far along. Based on reports from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — which later won the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts — we rated that claim Mostly True. There were caveats about incomplete information, but at the time, international experts said the claim largely held up.

 

Given recent events, we have pulled that fact-check (you can read an archived version here) because we now have many unanswered questions.

Slow clap for PolitiFact, everybody.

PolitiFact said the recent revelations lead to two possibilities:

Either Syria never fully complied with its 2013 promise to reveal all of its chemical weapons; or it did, but then converted otherwise non-lethal chemicals to military uses.

ORRRRRR the Obama administration deliberately misled us the entire time. Why leave that possibility out?

PolitiFact also wonders if Syria “gamed the system.”

In October 2016, a joint effort by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons reported that Syrian Arab Armed Forces had dropped chemical-laden bombs four times between 2014 and 2015. (That conclusive evidence was not available at the time of the original fact-check. One of our principles is that we rate statements based on what is known at the time.)

 

The U.N. group also found that Islamic State units had fired shells filled with sulfur mustard (mustard gas) in an attack in 2015.

 

Syrian forces used chlorine gas in 2014 and 2015. Brian Finlay, president of the Stimson Center, a military and defense think tank in Washington, noted that Syria promised to rid itself of sarin, mustard and VX, a nerve agent. But chlorine-based chemicals present a different challenge.

 

…

 

In November 2016, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons pointed out the failure of the Syrian government to live up to the promises it made in 2013. The group’s executive committee “demanded that the Syrian Arab Republic comply fully with its obligations.”

In other words, there were plenty of instances of nefarious behavior, the Obama administration didn’t do anything, and PolitiFact ate up every word the administration said.

PolitiFact ultimately concludes:

In the days and weeks to come, we will learn more about the recent attacks, but in the interest of providing clear information, we have replaced the original fact-check with this update.

Any way you slice it, this was a huge fail on the Obama administration’s part. I’m still surprised PolitiFact even bothered to admit how wrong it was.

And to think. PolitiFact is one of the “fact-checking” sources Facebook is using to crack down on “fake news.” Give me a break.

h/t Breitbart