ISIS Allegedly Led By Saddam Hussein's Commanders

by JASmius



Or, so the Washington Post wants you to believe, the Islamic State is George W. Bush's fault after all:

Many of the top leaders of the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS) were members of brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's inner circle, the Washington Post reports.

Despite the large number of foreign fighters, members of Iraq’s former Baathist army make up the majority of ISIS's military and security committees and its emirs and princes, according to the report.

The expertise the men bring help ISIS to outmaneuver the Iraqi and American militaries and the networks they developed for overcoming sanctions through smuggling are now helping ISIS with its oil trade.

Oh, if only Bush43 hadn't invaded Iraq, the Islamic State wouldn't exist, and maybe Saddam would have already nuked the mullahs for us, and....wait, that's right, Saddam didn't HAVE any WMDs, just like the mullahs don't, and aren't trying to build nukes.  So why are we endlessly negotiating with them, and why did we have sanctions and no-fly zones slapped on Iraq for the twelve years before that?  Because Bush41 invaded Iraq.  So ISIS is REALLY George H.W. Bush's fault.  Good thing he's over ninety and about to die as he deserves to - right, WaPo?

And if Jeb Bush becomes Bush45, he'll....invade Iraq.  Fauxcahontas, help us!

Trust me, gentles, all of the above are angles to this "story," which might have a legitimate source, but sounds made-up to me:

Even in Syria, the local emirs are shadowed by an Iraqi deputy who makes the decisions, a man using the pseudonym Abu Hamza told the Post. Abu Hamza became disillusioned with ISIS and eventually escaped to Turkey.

Nobody becomes "disillusioned" with ISIS.  Nor does anybody escape from it.  But ISIS agents are as adept at "outmaneuvering" the dementedly partisan American media as they are the Iraqi Army, which I had thought disintegrated last summer under ISIS's initial blitzkrieg assault, just as the American Army is disintegrating under Barack Obama's.

"All the decision makers are Iraqi, and most of them are former Iraqi officers. The Iraqi officers are in command, and they make the tactics and the battle plans," Abu Hamza told the Post. "But the Iraqis themselves don’t fight. They put the foreign fighters on the front lines."

Experts told the Post that the former Baathist members were steered to ISIS when the Iraqi army was disbanded after the American invasion of 2003. The Iraqi forces were barred from government employment and pensions, but were allowed to keep their weapons.

Facing poverty for years, many responded to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's recruitment. [emphasis added]

Which suggests that we should have liquidated them.  Or what Democrats would have denounced as "war crimes".  Which we never would have been in a position to commit if the Bush Dynasty hadn't invaded Iraq in the first place - right, WaPo?

That undercurrent runs throughout the entire piece:

Though the strict Islamic dogma of ISIS appears at odds with the secular rule of Saddam, the Iraqi government had actually been moving toward a form of religious rule since just after the first Iraq War in the early 1990s, according to the Post.

Iraq under Saddam had begun cutting off the hands of thieves and beheading women accused of prostitution. Saddam's forces also ruled by intimidation, as does ISIS.

"Former Baathist officers recall friends who suddenly stopped drinking, started praying, and embraced the deeply conservative form of Islam known as Salafism in the years preceding the U.S. invasion," the Post reported. [emphasis added]

See?  SEE?!?  Bush41 DROVE the Saddamites into ISIS's waiting arms.  If only we'd STAYED OUT OF IRAQ and PURSUED DIPLOMACY and MADE AN ALLY out of Saddam instead, none of this would have happened!

But....isn't that more or less what the Reagan and Bush41 Administrations did in the 1980s?  Didn't the Democrats have a field day criticizing it and blaming it for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, which bipartisanly unified official Washington, D.C. behind the belief that Saddam was a dangerous dictator with WMDs who sponsored jihadism and had to be stopped at all costs, including invasion and regime change?

Some of those officers had joined the U.S.-backed Awakening movement and fought al-Qaida in Iraq, which preceded ISIS. But after American troops were withdrawn, along with support for Awakening fighters, many joined ISIS. [emphasis added]

And who pell-mell withdrew American troops, along with support for Awakening fighters?



Ooops.  Are you sure you want to go down this road, WaPo?  Wouldn't your side be better off shrugging its shoulders and cracking, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"  Because I don't think you're going to like what you find.

And, trust us, we'll take care of the Bush Dynasty.  It will be our Jeb-uine pleasure.