The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS Read Online Free PDF Page A

able to galvanize others to join it as Zarqawi. Such organizations are rather, as we shall see, ideologically driven. Thus Zarqawi’s group survived him.
    On October 13, 2006, al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers reconstituted itself as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). 14 It continued to harass American troops in Iraq, biding its time until the inevitable day when the Americans would leave. That day came on December 14, 2011, when Barack Obama, speaking at Fort Bragg,North Carolina, to some of the last soldiers to come home from Iraq, boasted about ending the war and called the withdrawal of all American troops a “moment of success.” 15
    But the jihadis of the Islamic State of Iraq didn’t agree that the war was over. They weren’t walking away or folding up shop—in fact, they were expanding. They seized the opportunity that uprisings against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad provided to move into that neighboring country and on April 9, 2013, renamed their organization again as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS). 16 They then took advantage of the successes of the Sunni rebels in Syria (for whom Obama had asked Congress to authorize military support in the summer of 2013) and the weakness of the Shi’ite regime in Baghdad to assert control over territory in both Syria and Iraq. Both Assad and the Iraqi government in Baghdad were too weak to stop them.
     
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    WAIT, MAYBE YOU DON’T WIN WARS BY RETREATING?

    “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations and we are ending a war not with a final battle but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement.”
    —President Barack Obama, December 14, 2011 17
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    Rift between Islamic State and al-Qaeda Becomes Official, Western Leaders and Media Overjoyed
    Early in 2014, al-Qaeda attempted to reassert control over ISIS. Osama bin Laden had been killed in May of 2011, but the organization continued to operate under the leadership of his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, a scholarly Egyptian eye surgeon who had served as bin Laden’s personal physician. Zawahiri demanded that ISIS stand down and leave the jihad in Syria to another al-Qaeda–allied group, Jabhat al-Nusra. 18 When ISIS did not comply, al-Qaeda made the announcement on February 2, 2014: “ISIS is nota branch of the Qaidat al-Jihad group, we have no organizational relationship with it, and [our] group is not responsible for its actions.” 19
    Now this formal break came long after the alliance had ceased to exist anywhere but on paper. ISIS hadn’t even used the name “al-Qaeda” in over seven years. Nonetheless, Western leaders and the mainstream media made all they could out of the split between ISIS and al-Qaeda.
    In the midst of its lengthy campaign to convince Americans that the Islamic State was not Islamic at all, the Obama administration (and its willing enablers in the mainstream media) welcomed the rift between the two terror organizations as proof for its theory that ISIS was distorting and hijacking the religion of peace. “They’re more extreme than al-Qaeda,” said Secretary of State John Kerry in June 2014. This became a recurring theme in the media coverage of the jihadi groups. 22 MSNBC’s David Gregory said in August 2014 that ISIS was “cast off by al-Qaida because this group is considered too extreme.” 23 The UK’s Guardian told readers that “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) is so hardline that it was disavowed by al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.” 24 The UK’s Daily Mail noted that “lying among a pile of papers at the hideout in Pakistan where Osama Bin Laden was shot dead was a carefully worded 21-page letter” written by one of Osama’s men in 2011. This letter found at bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound warned that ISIS “had such complete disregard for civilian