Obama administration released al Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq

The current chaos in Iraq can be attributed to President Obama's inaction and to his actions.

As I noted last week, President Obama refused to retain a residual force of US troops in Iraq in 2011 when the country was mostly calm and peaceful, after the US military had routed Al Qaeda and the Iranian-backed insurgents. The end result of the President's decision, and his inaction, was the emergence of the insurgency that is currently strangling the country.

However, it is President Obama's actions that have actually created the current insurgency in Iraq, as Front Page Magazine aptly notes.

Front Page starts off by elaborating on the point I had made last week:

On October 22nd, 2007, Osama bin Laden admitted in an audio tape, entitled “Message to the people of Iraq,” that al Qaeda was losing the war in Iraq because it had made mistakes and no longer had the allegiance of Sunni insurgents who had switched sides. When Barack Obama became president on January 20, 2009, the war in Iraq was essentially won. The al Qaeda-backed insurgency was reduced to smoldering embers. George W. Bush’s surge had succeeded.

Front Page then goes on to say:

Safely behind bars at the time was Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, an al Qaeda-linked point man who was imprisoned at Camp Bucca in Iraq, after being captured by U.S. forces in 2005. According to a Pentagon assessment at the time, al Baghdadi “would kidnap individuals or entire families, accuse them, pronounce sentence and then publicly execute them.”

However, the Obama administration decided to shut down the Bucca prison camp and hand over its prisoners to the Iraqi government, including Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in 2009. The Iraqi government later released him. Al Baghadi boasted to the U.S. soldiers who had held him prisoner, “I’ll see you in New York.”

The release of al Baghadi and other jihadist insurgents from the Bucca prison, coupled with President Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 rather than follow the military’s advice to leave a residual force behind, turned the smoldering embers of the once defeated al Qaeda-backed insurgency into a raging out-of-control conflagration.

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi has re-emerged to become the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)... ISIS in recent days has taken control of large portions of northern and western Iraq including Iraq’s second largest city Mosul. ISIS freed at least 1,000 militants held in prisons in Mosul, adding more jihadists to its swelling ranks. It has looted hundreds of millions of dollars from northern Iraqi banks and taken sophisticated military equipment left behind by fleeing Iraqi soldiers...

That's right, Obama's actions, namely his decision to hand over al Baghdadi and his fellow prisoners to the Iraqi government - which subsequently freed the thugs - in essence, created the current insurgency in Iraq.

But Obama apparently has a penchant for transferring terrorist detainees to other governments, despite the inherent danger entailed in such handovers. He also has a penchant for freeing terrorist detainees, especially Gitmo detainees.

Earlier this year, the Afghan government released 65 Taliban fighters from a former U.S. prison that had been transferred over by the Obama administration to Afghan control. The release of the fighters came despite the objections of US military personnel who said that the terrorist detainees were "directly linked to attacks killing or wounding 32 U.S. or coalition personnel and 23 Afghan security personnel", and that the terrorists would likely return to the battlefield to kill even more NATO and Afghan troops.

And, last month, the Obama administration freed five senior Taliban commanders from Gitmo in exchange for US army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. I noted at the time as follows:

The President has sought all avenues, pretexts and excuses to free all detainees currently held in Gitmo, so that he could fulfill his pledge to close down the facility... President Obama's zeal to shut down Gitmo is well-known. Hence, it is no surprise that the Obama administration... released 5 "high-ranking", senior terrorists from Gitmo in exchange for the release of US marine Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl..

A senior administration official told CNN, "The transfer of these individuals is not a concession -- it is fully in line with the President's goal of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay."

The senior administration official - perhaps unwittingly - revealed the truth, namely that the release of the five terrorists from Gitmo was not a concession on Obama's part. Quite the contrary, Obama has desperately sought any pretext to free any and all Gitmo detainees so that he could eventually close down the facility and boast that his campaign pledge to shut down the facility was not an empty promise. Bergdahl's release allowed the President to free 5 more Gitmo detainees and avoid scrutiny. Hence, there was no concession on the President's part; quite the contrary, releasing the five Gitmo detainees, pretext and all, was a wish, and a dream, come true for Obama...

Sadly, many detainees who've been released from Gitmo in the past have rejoined their terrorist comrades and have gone on to kill even more US and NATO troops.

Many Gitmo detainees have been repatriated to other countries where they've been placed either in a prison or a rehab facility for a brief period of time before being released to the wild to inflict more human casualties...

Likewise, the Obama administration handed over Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, and his fellow prisoners, to the Iraqis who subsequently released them into the wild, where they are now wreaking destruction upon the entire country.