Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

McLaughlin and other CIA officials began ticking off a list of components of a classic insurgency from a standard Pentagon field manual. Iraq, they said, was facing an organized resistance movement that sought to overthrow central authority through subversion and armed conflict. They described the collusion between domestic opponents and foreign terrorists and highlighted what was known about the movement’s leadership, tactics, and weapons. According to one participant, the Defense Department’s representatives were unmoved. “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.”