During the first GOP Presidential Debate on Thursday night, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was asked about the United States’ involvement with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He noted that while the U.S. did not create ISIS directly, it is responsible for the group obtaining at least a billion dollars in Humvees deserted by the United States.

[RELATED: ISIS Seized 2,300 U.S. Armored Humvees, Possibly Worth 1 Billion Dollars]

As Truth In Media previously reported, when ISIS fighters seized the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014, they reportedly obtained over 2,300 U.S. military armored humvees.

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“I am the leading voice in America for not arming ISIS,” said Paul, adding that the best way to defeat the group was to stop funding and arming them.

[RELATED: Truth In Media: The Origin of ISIS]

Investigative journalist Ben Swann reported on the origin of ISIS in March, noting that while the United States did not create ISIS directly, it did help the group go from a “no-name group in Syria” to a group that was “heavily armed and trained by U.S. and Coalition Special Forces.”

“One of the most important facts that mainstream media ignores time and time again is that ISIS was able to grow so fast, because of all the U.S. military equipment they were able to seize – equipment that our military left in Iraq,” Swann said. “Truckloads of Humvees, tanks and weaponry that instead of taking or destroying, the U.S. government simply decided to leave behind.”

Swann also noted that even when the U.S. government “became aware that ISIS fighters were capturing U.S. equipment, it did nothing.”

Watch the full episode of Truth In Media: The Origin of ISIS:

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