American leaders were "too dumb" in the years that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda on the U.S. that they released from Iraqi jail a man who later founded the most brutal terrorist organisation in the world, the Islamic State (ISIS).
The admission came from retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of U.S. special forces, in a recent interview by the German newspaper Der Spiegel.
Flynn said the strategic blunders by then U.S. President George W. Bush led to the downfall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the subsequent rise of the ISIS led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was freed in 2004 from a military prison after a U.S. military commission cleared him as "harmless," Rawstory reported.
Flynn said American leaders—both military and political—allowed their anger of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to cloud their mind and lead them into disastrous policies that not only failed to address the root causes of terrorism but also helped create new and more brutal terrorists.
"We were too dumb," Flynn said. "We didn't understand who we had there at that moment. When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, 'Where did those bastards come from? Let's go kill them. Let's go get them.' Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from. Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction."
The U.S. decided to invade Iraq after President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell presented false intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and alleged links to al-Qaeda, Flynn said.
"First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda was based, then we went to Iraq," he said. "Instead of asking ourselves why the phenomenon of terror occurred, we were looking for locations. This is a major lesson we must learn in order not to make the same mistakes again."
Flynn, who became the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency prior to his retirement, admitted that he regrets his role in the Iraq War.
"Yes, absolutely," said Flynn, who served from 2004 to 2007 in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It was huge error," he said. "As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision."
