How the Bush-administration built ISIS. (No, literally.)

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1780-we-built-their-death-squads-isiss-bizarre-origin-story.html

- Camp Bucca was an unofficial prison run by the US-army in Iraq. The inmates? Everyone they wanted to get rid off without the hassle of a trial. It is estimated that 90% of the inmates were actually innocent. But it was a formidable melting-pot where extremists of all colors got to know each other. One of those inmates was Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

- The inmates learned to put their squabbles aside and focus their hatred on a common enemy: The US.

- The US employed iraqi death-squads. No, real death-squads. Their name was "Sons of Iraq" and they were mainly sunni. They slaughtered pretty much anybody who so much as MAYBE caused trouble. And while the US-soldiers had regulations, the Sons of Iraq learned very fast that they had carte blanche to arrest and kill whomever they felt like.
90% of the drop of violence due to the "surge" was due to their method to liberally kill any perceived trouble-makers.

- In 2008 the Bush-administration transfered the control over all iraqi prisoners, including Camp Bucca, to the iraqi government. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was released in 2010.

- Also, in 2008 the Bush-administration pushed the responsibility of paying the Sons of Iraq to the iraqi government. When the US-army left Iraq under Obama in 2011, freedom-loving Al-Maliki immediately sacked his sunni vice-president and stopped paying the sunni Sons of Iraq.

Most of the Sons of Iraq didn't join ISIS, although some did, for the money. The main point was: The toughest fighting-force of Iraq, consisting of a 100,000 battle-hardened, trigger-happy, brutal assholes, had been disbanded. ISIS had 30,000 fighters at that point. And the iraqi army is a joke.

The rest is history.