It was no mystery that ISIS was headed by both the leader of al Tawhid but also the head of Iraqi intelligence... for the group had been aided from the beginning by Iraq, even in 1999... ven when it had a training camp in Afghanistan near bin Laden’s. The Iraqi general in question was the same one who after 1996 [the year of a failed coup in Iraq] began advising Saddam Hussein to embrace islamists. In response, Hussein imposed elements of shariah law, began constructing mosques, had his son’s newspaper begin praising al Qaeda, funded Mullah Krekar’s Ansar attacks on Kurds in the north, etc. Krekar’s group contained members of Iraqi intelligence and merged into al Tawhid before it renamed itself. Saddam’s speeches grew increasingly islamicist. Iraq’s internet domain Uruk.net was based on the same server used by terror charities in the US prior to 9/11- remember the Holy Land Foundation -and published his speeches regularly. They did not read like the ramblings of a ‘secularist.’ Aroound the same time Iraq began funding Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, the group that was making news by lopping off hostages’ heads.
What we call ISIS today was the same group cited by Colin Powell in 2002 as having terrorist cells in Baghdad and in northern Iran on the Iranian border. The head of that group al Tawhid - also the first head of ISIS before al Baghdaddi- and the guy who plotted the Millennium attacks on Jordanian targets in 1999 that were to coincide with the AQ millennium attack on the airport in Los Angeles that New Year’s... was the guy the left kept insisting wasn’t a threat because he wasn’t “al Qaeda” at the time of 9/11. He hadn’t yet sworn the oath to bin Laden. Strangely enough, he did eventually swear the oath to bin Laden ... but only after Saddam Hussein was dead.
The Bush admin was actually prescient in wanting to take out this group so long ago ... but were mocked for it by the same morons who later empowered the group as it went through its name changes. They had identified it as an enemy long before you even knew they existed.
Go back to the history of Saudi Arabia.