Stephen Colbert Falsely Claims Reagan Ignored Iraq's Chemical Weapons Use

Faux news man Stephen Colbert served up some faux facts this week.

The liberal funnyman’s The Colbert Report on Comedy Central tried to swat at the legend of President Ronald Reagan but used some fuzzy recollections to do so. Here’s Colbert suggesting Reagan didn’t care about the human suffering that occurred when then-Iraq leader Saddam Hussein unleashed chemical weapons during the 1980s.

That’s why we know, we conservatives know that the Gipper would never stand for the use of chemical weapons… today. Of course in the 1980’s his administration ignored chemical attacks by Saddam Hussein that killed thousands of Iranian troops and looked the other way when Saddam gassed his own Kurdish citizens.

As Newsbusters notes, Reagan didn’t go to war with Iraq over those actions, but he denounced them in the harshest terms possible in 1988.

Mr. Secretary-General, distinguished delegates, the terror of it. The horror of it. We condemn it. The use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war — beyond its tragic human toll — jeopardizes the moral and legal strictures that have held these weapons in check since World War I. Let this tragedy spark reaffirmation of the Geneva protocol outlawing the use of chemical weapons.

Better to distort history than hold the current occupier of the White House to task for his amateurish handling of foreign affairs.