Bush/Cheney Created Conditions that Led Directly to ISIL

[Tom Joad]

You're Goddamned right they did and it's about time they took some personal responsibility for it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...usaolp00000592

Bush/Cheney Created Conditions that Led Directly to ISIL
Posted: 09/15/2014 4:46 am EDT Updated: 4 hours ago

It takes a lot of gall for people like Dick Cheney to utter even one critical word about President Obama's strategy to eliminate the threat of ISIL in the Middle East.

In fact, it was the unnecessary Bush/Cheney Iraq War that created the conditions that led directly to the rise of the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL).

Former George H.W. Bush Secretary of State James Baker said as much on this week's edition of "Meet the Press." He noted that after the first President Bush had ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, the U.S. had refrained from marching on Baghdad precisely to avoid kicking over the sectarian hornet's nest that was subsequently unleashed by the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq in 2003.

But it wasn't just the War in Iraq itself that set the stage for the subsequent 12 years of renewed, high-intensity sectarian strife between Sunni's and Shiites in the Middle East. It was also what came after.

Bush's "de-Bathification program" eliminated all vestiges of Sunni power in Iraqi society and set the stage for the Sunni insurrection against American occupation and the new Shiite-led government. Bush disbanded the entire Sunni-dominated Iraqi Army and bureaucracy. He didn't change it. He didn't make it more inclusive of Shiites and Kurds. He just disbanded it. It is no accident that two of the top commanders of today's ISIL are former commanders in the Saddam-era Iraqi military.



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