But those Marines and mechanized unit didn’t allow us to hide the number of casualties. We know for a fact that we supplemented troops for offensives, the “Surge” was supplemented with locals that became the core of ISIS when we stopped giving them things to do. So if somebody is fantasizing here it’s you. Your confidence goes 100% counter to known facts.
Believe what you want to. When you say something like “We know for a fact” and then state an off the wall ISIS conspiracy theory, I lose faith in the objectivity of your analysis.
It reminds me of Mark Twain’s quip that, it’s not so much what we don’t know that’s the problem, as it is what we do know, that just ain’t so.
The core that became ISIS was alQueda in Iraq. And to a lesser degree, the Ba’ath Party. We were steadily hunting and killing them, every night.