Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

part of the worsening violence in Iraq, he was helping direct it. Bakos studied the reports and prepared to write the summary that would be included in the next day’s briefing papers for the White House. By now the essential conclusion looked solid: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was behind the attacks. The terrorist the Bush administration had cited as a reason for attacking Saddam Hussein had in fact become empowered by the Iraqi leader’s defeat. A minor worry before, when he was confined to a remote corner of Iraq’s northern mountains, now he had been set loose in the Iraqi heartland and was becoming more menacing by the day. Much later, intelligence officials and terrorism experts who studied the early war years marveled at Zarqawi’s strategic cunning. Whether deliberately or by coincidence, he picked targets that would confound U.S. ambitions for Iraq and ensure that the occupation of the country would be long and painful. The opening salvo against an Arab embassy would effectively discourage other Muslim nations from participating in Iraq’s rebuilding in a way that might give the Americans legitimacy. That blow was followed by two others that, in sequence, showed “brilliant strategy,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior CIA terrorism analyst who went on to advise two U.S. presidents.