Agree with your assessment.
It seems that we have very few men of honor in leadership anymore.
Besides, how long are we going to deceive ourselves with statements like:
“It created fertile ground once again for the planting of the seeds of extremism and alienated the Sunni Arab component of Iraqi society.”
Really? They have been at each other’s throats for centuries.
As for ISIS—we started them and we armed them.
David Petraeus can go join Colin Powell in the pantheon of those I don’t listen to anymore.
Sinnis are all to blame. It is all 100% backed by Sunnis— find me a sunni that doesnt sit silent on the head choppers? Find one— let me know.
David Petraeus can go join Colin Powell in the pantheon of those I don’t listen to anymore.
We did not “start” ISIS. ISIS is composed of Zarqawi’s old group al Tawhid, which was responsible for the late 1999 Millennium plot to bomb a Jordanian hotel frequented by Americans and Israelis and also the failed attempt to bomb LAX airport. al Tawhid was a Palestinian group which entered Iraq and merged with a Kurdish radical Mullah Krekar’s group Ansar al Islam, which was composed partly of officials belonging to Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service the Mukhabarat. Krekar was based in Norway and also had a cell in Milan which funneled European recruits to Ansar and which was known for the taped discussion of the upcoming 9/11 attacks on the US that the Italians intercepted but did not translate in time.
Zarqawi rose to a leadership role in the merged groups after establishing terrorist cells during the reign of Saddam Hussein - one in Baghdad known for its decapitation of a nun prior to our invasion and also a cell in northern Iraq on the border with Iran, where work was underway to produce a toxic ricin cream intended to be used on European public rail targets, etc. The merged group was responsible for the murder of US Aid official Lawrence Foley in Jordan before the invasion of Iraq.
When they changed their name to al Qaeda in Iraq after our invasion and after the execution of Saddam Hussein, Zarqawi swore the oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden. One of his uderlings was al Baghdaddi who later led the organization after Zarqawi bit the farm and they took up the name ISIS, I think there was another interim leader or two.
Zarqawi’s courier was captured at one point bearing an “all-is-lost” message when the organization was suffering after the Awakening and surge.
All this time more and more former Baath Party officials joined the group now called al Qaeda in Iraq, which laid relatively low until President Dingleberry announced we would withdraw.
Since then as IS / Islamic State and ISIS they appear to have begun to swell since the re-emergence of the red-headed Baath Party/Saddam Hussein henchman al Douri.