I understand your point, but ain’t it funny how ISIS wasn’t even a player when Saddam Hussein was still in power?
wrong..... although Saddam was Baatist, the Sunni’s of Iraq held down and bach the Shia to the south
The current division is along that division and the Sunni component was alway there but not radicalised. When it is concluded the wackos will be gone but the Sunnis will still be there and Iraq will be sundered
“ain’t it funny how ISIS wasn’t even a player when Saddam Hussein was still in power?”
Saddam was an exceptionally brutal dictator. Everything in Iraq was under his control, or ruthlessly supressed. See the book Republic of Fear for details.
He comitted large-scale genocide operations against the Kurds (not members of the Arab Race), during the Anfal Campaign. His cousin, Chemical Ali, was sentenced to death for his extensive (routine) use of nerve gas, in ethnically cleansing wide areas of Kurds.
Saddam personally killed many opponents and those who even aggravated him slightly. He rose initially within the Ba’ath Party as an assassin. He had a special pool installed in one of his palaces, which could hold concentrated nitric acid, and had a pulley system to use to lower prisoners into the acid. The day he took over the Ba’ath Party, he spent the afternoon executing 20% of the Central Committee of the Party one at a time, while the rest sat in an auditorium with him, not knowing who was next. Watch the 4 minute video on Youtube, he had it videotaped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm64E5R12s8
The early cadre of what would later become al Quaeda in Iraq, and later as ISIS/ISIL/IS, were in fact, covert guests of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq, reporting to the Intelligence services, as were many other terroist groups. The facility at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad was used for training them, and others, to conduct terrorist operations. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/salman_pak.htm )
Saddam was one of the largest supporters of terrorist organizations in the world at the time, and offered an open $25,000 bounty to the family of anyone who conducted suicide attack against Israelis.
Before September 11, 2001, al Quaeda was little known in the West, but well known in intelligence circles, including Iraqi. After the Gulf War in the mid 90’s, Saddam began systematic outreach to Islamist terrorist groups and revolutionary networks. The formerly secular Ba’ath Party began adopting religious themes, posting billboards depicting Saddam at prayer, and beginning construction of the giant Saddam Mosque.
Saddam sought deniable surrogates who could attack America after his Gulf War defeat, without suffering massive retaliation - this became conventional military theory among our enemies on how to fight the US, after the shocking display of American dominance on the battlefield in the Gulf War. Al Quaeda sought sophisticated training, weaponry and shelter. They kept in line and under cover in Iraq during the Saddam regime.