Kaine Acknowledges Obama Admin Failed to Rid Syria of Chemical Weapons

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) acknowledged Tuesday that the Obama administration failed to rid Syria of the Assad regime's chemical weapons, despite repeated claims from the past administration that it completely eliminated the stockpile.

MSNBC's Willie Geist asked Kaine on "Morning Joe" about the Obama administration's program to take and destroy chemical weapons held by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has used such weapons on his own people, including unarmed civilians, dozens of times during Syria's ongoing conflict.

"As you know well, President Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry, believed that they had 100 percent, in their words, of chemical weapons out of Syria, that their policy had worked," Geist said. "Clearly, that was wrong, we know now. How did they get it so wrong there?"

"Well, it was clear that massive amounts of the chemical weapons stockpile was destroyed; Virginians were involved in that effort to destroy chemical weapons," Kaine responded. "But there were both chemical weapons they spirited away and then there's also—Syria uses some kinds of chemicals that were not officially on the banned list but that nevertheless have significant health impacts when they're used, and when a nation is using chemical weapons against their own civilians it's a humanitarian disaster."

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