The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS,) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was formerly held by the U.S. military at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq from 2005 to his release in 2009.
Hmmm. The US Department of Justice wanted page for Abu Bakr doesn’t mention that, to steal a construction from the Man Who Would Be King, but wound up as Secretary of State: we were for al-Baghdadi before we were against him. But now we’re definitely against him, to the tune of ten million smackers’ reward.
We have always been at war with Eastasia, brother.
Note that we’re all that against him, like we were in the bad old days of Cowboy Bush. We’re not offering the reward for the head of this clown, FOB Fallujah, in a cooler with some dry ice. Somewhere, old KGB officer Vladimir Vladimirovich is shaking his head at American amateurishness, remembering how his service solved the problem of jihadi kidnappings of a random Russian in Lebanon. (Messy KGB wet-work applied to random jihadi leaders. Message received, jihad out. The Russian captive was released with an apology). No, we’re looking for the guy so that Covington and Burling can pocket millions in Gulf Arab jihad money, to tie the US courts up with him wink-nod “pro bono”.
Yet we had the guy, perfectly neutralized in a small, uncomfortable cell. Hmmm. What happened in early 2009 that led to mass releases of terrorists? We seem to recall some calamity or other that gave rise to this.
Why such a dangerous man was slated for release in 2009, or who made the decision is not known. The Telegraph offers that “one possible explanation is that he was one of thousands of suspected insurgents granted amnesty as the US began its draw down in Iraq.”In 2010, shortly after his release, al-Baghdadi was announced as a new al-Qaeda leader. When bin Laden was killed in 2011, Baghdadi pledged to revenge his death “with 100 terrorist attacks across Iraq” – but with al Qaeda leaders dropping like flies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, no one took him seriously.
via ISIS Leader in Iraq was Released from U.S. Detention Camp in 2009 | CNS News.
Exercise for the reader: How many Italian POWs from the Desert Campaign were ordered released after Italy sued for peace in 1943? (Hint: it’s the number of White House officials who attended the state funeral of MG Greene. But they sent three to the funeral of the wannabe cop killer who started the Ferguson riots).
How many Japanese POWs from Guadalcanal were let go because the war had moved on to Iwo Jima?
But just about everybody we had in the bag on 20 Jan 09 is back in the jihad business today (if they weren’t so incredibly unlucky as to get whacked in the interim).
The country’s in the very best of hands.