George W Bush godfather of ISIS, United States general says

On this May 1, 2003 photo, United States President George W Bush flashes a ‘thumbs-up’ after declaring victory in Iraq as he speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast. Six months after he spoke on that aircraft carrier deck under a banner proclaiming ‘Mission Accomplished’, President Bush disavowed any connection with the war message. Later, the White House changed its story and said there was a link.

The ISIS terrorist organisation has quite some ‘godbrothers’, including Turkish President Erdogan, ruling class people in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and elsewhere; as United States Vice President Joe Biden and many others have pointed out.

The main cause of the birth of ISIS was the 2003 start of the Iraq war by George W Bush and Tony Blair. As, again, many people have pointed out: including US President Obama; former United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan; and George W Bush’s ex-neo-colonial viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremer. Recently, after a long time of being in denial, even Tony Blair himself half-apologized for his role as ‘godfather’ of ISIS.

Will George W Bush apologize, or half-apologize now, for his role as the other ‘godfather’ of ISIS? Will his little brother Jeb Bush (one of many Republican party candidates for the presidency; so far, public opinion polls say, remarkably unsuccessful, in spite of all his Super PAC money)? Now that an important officer in the United States armed forces has spoken on this?

By Travis Gettys in the USA:

Former head of US special forces admits: Islamic State would not exist if Bush didn’t invade Iraq

30 Nov 2015 at 09:59 ET

The former commander of U.S. special forces in Afghanistan and Iraq admitted that strategic blunders by the Bush administration had led to the rise of Islamic State militants.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told the German newspaper Der Spiegel that Americans allowed their anger of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to lead them into disastrous military policies that failed to address the root causes of terrorism — and actually helped create new and more brutal terrorists.

The misunderstanding was so great that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who now heads ISIS, was freed in 2004 from a military prison after a U.S. military commission cleared him as harmless.

“We were too dumb,” Flynn said. “We didn’t understand who we had there at that moment. When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, ‘Where did those bastards come from? Let’s go kill them. Let’s go get them.’ Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from.

The Bush administration did not even look properly where the 9/11 perpetrators came from. They were from the Saudi Arabian absolute monarchy (staunch allies of Pentagon, CIA and US Big Oil, with Saudi Prince ‘Bandar Bush’ being particularly close to the US Bush dynasty); and from Egypt, ruled by dictatorial Pentagon and CIA ally Hosni Mubarak.

Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction.”

Now the truth emerges: Here’s how the US fueled the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq

Laura Ingraham discovers Bush to blame for ISIS: ‘Iraq is worse than before we went in’

Hillary Clinton chides Jeb Bush on brother’s role in Iraq leading to ISIS

Ms Clinton is right on that. However, as her fellow Democratic party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and many others have pointed out, Hillary Clinton herself was wrong in voting for the Iraq war in 2002.

The U.S. invaded Iraq after administration officials — including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell — presented false intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s [alleged] weapons of mass destruction and alleged links to al-Qaeda.

“First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda was based, then we went to Iraq,” Flynn said. “Instead of asking ourselves why the phenomenon of terror occurred, we were looking for locations. This is a major lesson we must learn in order not to make the same mistakes again.”

Flynn, who served just before his retirement as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, admitted that he regrets his role in the Iraq War.

“Yes, absolutely,” said Flynn, who served from 2004 to 2007 in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It was huge error,” he continued. “As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him.

Deposing Saddam Hussein should have been done by the Iraqi people. Not by a foreign military invasion, causing over a million dead, millions of injured people, over four million refugees, etc. etc. Like the colonels’ dictatorship in Greece was not finished by invasion by NATO (which considered the dictators to be allies), but by the Greek people. Like the dictatorships in Portugal, in Spain, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Indonesia, etc. were all finished by the people, without any bloodbath like Bush’s and Blair’s in Iraq.

The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.”

TED CRUZ GOES AFTER MARCO RUBIO “Ted Cruz on Monday offered his strongest denunciation so far of Marco Rubio‘s foreign policy views, assailing his Republican presidential rival as a proponent of ‘military adventurism’ that he said has benefited Islamic militant groups. He even tied the Floridian to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.” [Bloomberg]

‘HOW THE ARAB WORLD CAME APART’ This five-part New York Times investigation meticulously traces “the catastrophe that has fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq 13 years ago, leading to the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis.” [NYT]