Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

A sentence could be drastically shortened because of a change in government, or a perceived need to curry favor with a religious party or tribe. If that happened, Zarqawi could find himself, and perhaps his army of followers, suddenly free.

crazy! not sure what the better solution to handling radicalized criminals would be, but this "stick them in prison together to radicalize more and then let them out with a legit beef against the people who confined and tortured them" seems insane

It was one of the great ironies of the age, Abu Hanieh said. In deciding to use the unsung Zarqawi as an excuse for launching a new front in the war against terrorism, the White House had managed to launch the career of one of the century’s great terrorists.

“Right before the invasion, I asked the Pentagon, ‘Is anyone writing policy on force protection?’ The answer was no, so I said I’d do it,” said one former CIA analyst who was enlisted to help. “I was doing military analysis because they had literally no one doing it on the inside.”

Just insane that the post-invasion plans were actually this bad. LITERALLY NO ONE DOING IT?!?

The failure to provide security after the invasion had been a sin of omission: U.S. officials had not anticipated the breakdown in civil authority that would follow the invasion. By contrast, the decisions to dissolve the Iraqi army and ban Baath Party members from positions of authority were as deliberate as they were misguided.

“The military wasn’t interested in hearing this,” the official recalled years later. “They were hoping they were done with the war, and they didn’t go in for any talk about insurgencies.”