Let’s Learn About ISIS and How the US and its Allies Create Their Own Enemies:

Preface: This article covers over 65 years. It is not meant to be a complete history, just a summary of events as well as a list of sources for further reading / watching so that one can understand how the US and its allies played a part in creating ISIS. This story starts way back in 1951 when Iran's democratically elected leader, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, nationalized the Irianian oil industry. Mosaddegh was then ousted shortyly after by a US and UK backed coup d'état in 1953. After the US coup the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, controlled power within Iran. The Shah turns Iran into a totalitarian dictatorship, until 1979 where he has to run from the country because of a brewing revolution. They say his plane was so full of gold it could barely get off the tarmac. The story continues a few years later with the US flying the Shah around on military aircraft in the US to get surgery. This resulted in the Iranians becoming aggravated enough to take over a US embassy and capture hostages. You can learn more about that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamm... At the same time the Shah is being thrown out of power, just one country west in Iraq Saddam Hussein is coming to power. The important things to note are that Iran and Iraq contain a Shia majority. The Iranians install a Shia leader. However Saddam Hussein a Sunni violently grabs power within Iraq. Just a year later in 1980 the Iran Iraq war begins with Iraq being the aggressor. The US backed Saddam, but we will get to that eventually. You can learn more about that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran?¿½... Skip ahead a few years to 1985 and US Iranian diplomacy is still in shambles and the Iran Iraq war continues. This is when the Lebanon hostage crisis occurs. To get western hostages back the Regan administration makes some shady deals to sell weapons to Iran, a country that dislikes the US and is on an embargo list mind you. This is known as the Iran-Contra Scandal. You can learn more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran?¿½... Now what is important to note is that at this point the US had horrible relations with Iran and was beginning to favor Sunnis. So the US threw its support behind Saddam Hussein. They even end up selling him precursors to chemical weapons so he could gas the Iranians, which he did (http://www.newsweek.com/how-us-nerv...). This article is interesting because this came back to haunt the US during the Gulf War when US troops destroyed weapons stores and were poisoned, the cause for “Gulf War Syndrome”, which was subsequently covered up. Read more here: http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26...

Let’s fast forward a bit, Iran loses a lot of its power and influence and its economy is hurt by Western embargoes, Saddam Hussein becomes power hungry, attacks Kuwait, a US oil ally, and gets his ass handed to him in the first gulf war, furthermore Saddam started trading oil in Euros in 2000 and he was supposedly one of major counterfeiters of US dollars (http://www.theguardian.com/business... ). (Commentary: If you are a head of a weak state and have resources don’t piss off the US by trading them in different currencies. They will crush you. Learn more here: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/02... and here were Ron Paul predicted the Libyan invasion: https://vimeo.com/5372026) Now the year is 2001 and 9/11 attacks occur. The important thing to know about this incident is where the terrorists who committed this act came from. There were 19 men involved in the attack affiliated with al-Qaeda (a Sunni group), 15 of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia (Sunni), and the others were from the United Arab Emirates (2, also Sunni), Egypt (Sunni) and Lebanon (Sunni). Some other important things to note are that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt are allies of the United States. Also another “ally”, Isreal, of the US has over 50 citizens / spies arrested in the US as part of the 9/11 investigation (See the report here about some of them as well as Israeli knowledge of the attacks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbk... ). After 9/11 the US government was trying to improve standings with the Islamic community. So they invited, Anwar Al-Awlaki, to the Pentagon for a lunch. Al-Awlaki was one of the US citizens (his 16 year old son the second) that the US military killed with drones in Yemen in 2011. He was later found to have ties to al-Qaeda long after he was supposedly vetted to eat at the Pentagon. Read more here: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/10/2... and here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/30/polit... In 2003 the US decided to invade Iraq again citing reports of weapons of mass destruction, mainly believed to be nuclear. However these weapons were never found, though more chemical weapons were found. There is lots of controversy around why the US really went into Iraq because there were no ties to al-Qaeda before they did. Some like Ron Paul in the video above, say it was because of Iraq trading oil in Euros, and others like the ex-NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Wesley Clack, said we just did it to do something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC... What is important is that after The US invaded Iraq an Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda was formed. This branch was referred to as the Islamic State way before ISIS was a common term. The US intelligence agencies refer to it as AQI or al-Qaeda in Iraq. This branch was started by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi was not part of al-Qaeda when he became the leader of insurgents within Iraq. It was only after discussion between Zarqawi and Bin Laden that these insurgents were recognized as al-Qaeda. But there was some falling out after Zarqawi (a Sunni) declared war on the Shia Muslims in Iraq in 2005. Zarqawi’s successor was Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, who took over AQI in 2006 after Zarqawi was killed by a targeted US strike. Abu Rashid al-Baghdadi was supposedly killed in 2010 in Tikrit, though at one point in 2007 he was thought to not be a real person (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/w...) After Rashid’s death Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over as leader of AQI/ISI. What is interesting about that is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was actually captive of the US at one point who was released from custody (http://www.politifact.com/punditfac...). Read more here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news... and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islami... Now that we understand the beginnings of IS let’s skip over to a new theater, Libya. In 2011 the Libyan civil war started (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan...). Something to note is that just a few years previous in 2009 Mommar Gadhafi proposed that the African continent start trading resources in the Gold Dinar rather than the US dollar (http://rt.com/news/economy-oil-gold...). This included oil from the country of Libya. Anyhow in March of 2011 there was international intervention, on the side of the rebels, largely led by the US as well as NATO and others, such as Qatar. What important about this is that the US at this point had been fighting its war on terror against its major enemy, al-Qaeda, for 10 years. However the opposition to Gadhafi was made of some elements of al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor... ), yet the US still backed them. This included air support as well as aid and weapons (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...). The evidence continues mounting that the west knowingly backed the group, al-Qaeda, they had just spent 10 years previously fighting to make sure it was wiped out. And not to be left out were the US’s Qatari allies who the UN also found to have sent weapons: (http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/...) Further evidence of the US and the West sending al-Qaeda in Libya weapons can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor... here: http://mobile.wnd.com/2015/01/gener... and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMjX... In September of 2012 in Benghazi, Libya the US embassy that was in place there was attacked by Muslim extremists. The same people who just months before the US and its allies were backing. It turns out after further research by multiple groups that the US was actually using the embassy as a possible CIA outpost to run guns. Not only were guns being sent to Libya, but also to the growing movement with in Syria using Turkey to hand them off. This is covered in both the Blaze article in the paragraph above as well as this report from the London Review of Books: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymou... Being that Turkey shares a border with Syria, they have a major incentive to maintain influence in the region. At the moment the Syrian government is ran by Bashir Assad and the members of his cabinet who are mostly Shia Muslims, though Syria is mostly populated by Sunni citizens. This is a point of contention between the two countries. This has led to some interesting outcomes. One being the possibility the Turks played a major role in helping the Syrian rebels create the chemical weapons they used (which you can read more about in the London Review of Books report above). The other is that the Turkish government tried to plan a false flag attack on their country framing the Syrians so that they could invade (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-...). This is important to note since Turkey is a NATO nation and because of the NATO treaty if they were attacked other NATO nations would have to join the fight. This would have pulled the US into the war, whose government was all for it, but its citizens fought back against this invasion. This brings us to the Syrian Civil War and the beginning of wide spread use of the term ISIS in the media. It turns out the Syrian Civil War is very similar to the Libyan Civil War in that there are supposedly two groups of rebels. The first being the moderates known as the Free Syrian Army and second the extremists known as al-Nusra. Al-Nusra is similar to AQI in that it is the branch of al-Qaeda within Syria. It is also the group which is now considered to be part of ISIS. There are disputes that that the two rebel groups have worked together to fight the Syrian army, backed by the Assad government, as well as that they fight each other and the Syrian army. The US decided, like in Libya, to back the ‘moderate rebels’ against the Syrian army, though in doing so it ended up, like in Libya, helping the extremists as well. The US and its allies have helped the rebels in four ways: training, weapons, funding and aid. First, the US Special Forces stationed in Jordan were tasked with training some of these rebels. It turns out that a Jordanian military officer said that some of the rebels the US troops trained were actually ISIS (http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/06/offic...). Second, we have already touched partially on the US sending these rebels weapons through Turkey, but there is even more evidence of this to be the case: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w.... Third, funding has come from both the US and its allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar (remember where the 9/11 terrorists came from?). This funding just like the training and weapons has ended up benefiting the extremist rebels, al-Nusra Front, and ISIS. Even the x-NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Wesley Clark, talked about this on CNN: http://youtu.be/QHLqaSZPe98 . An interesting note is that some of this funding that is coming from the US’s Middle Eastern allies has been funneled through Kuwait, the country the US fought to defend in the first Iraq war. Fourth, aid has been given to rebels in Israel by Israeli troops. This may be likened to Israel trying to us the moderate rebels to defend their border, however it is possible that some of this support is going to help ISIS as we see in the three other ways listed (http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israe...). Read more about weapons ending up in ISIS hands here: http://www.businessinsider.com/its-... Read more about funding going to ISIS here: http://rt.com/op-edge/190784-isis-u... here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl... and here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/... Read more about Israel giving aid to Syrian rebels: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Ne... In conclusion we can see that US Middle East policy has been shaped by one mistake near the end of WWII. This has caused a cascade of terrible Middle East policy. The US has even ended up supporting countries and groups that plague them in future engagements. These include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and even Israel and Kuwait. Some of these US allies even actively work to support groups, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, which may become or even are a huge threat to the US. So because of the US’s second invasion into Iraq after 9/11 al-Qaeda was able to get a firm grasp in the region, something that was not possible before. Also, because of the US’s support in both Libya and Syria al-Qaeda backed rebel groups benefited. These actions, as well as direct support from the US allies, is what allowed ISIS to be formed