Update on Islamic State "caliph" Bakr al-Baghdadi: Reports are circulating that he was "critically wounded" in a U.S. air strike yesterday, according to "tribal sources" -- so reports al-Arabiya news service. Other reports are circulating elsewhere, often with confusingly different info. No one really knows yet what, if anything, has happened. Juan Cole suggests this morning that the reports are so confused and confusing that they should not yet be taken too seriously and adds, "The US has killed a long line of al-Qaeda leaders by now, from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 to Bin Laden himself. The military’s theory that leadership is rare and attrition wrought on leaders is decisive in defeating a group is simply incorrect. ISIL’s toolbox of terrorizing and coercing people is available to large numbers of people. Plus, ISIL’s big advances in June of this year weren’t even military, but rather were political. They convinced the people of Mosul, a city of 2 million, to join them against the Shiite government in Baghdad. There are plenty more potential ISIL leaders out there."
While we're on the subject, the origins of the Islamic State movement can be traced back to an American military prison in Iraq where the "caliph" and most of the top leaders of that movement, mainly from the disbanded Iraqi army met and were further radicalized. I've called it the "West Point" of the IS. Today, the Washington Post has a piece on that prison, which in its own way is a piece on how the U.S. helped to birth the first extremist Islamic terror mini-state in the Middle East. Tom
"'These men weren’t planting flowers in a garden,' police chief Saad Abbas Mahmoud told The Washington Post’s Anthony Shadid, estimating that 90 percent of the freed prisoners would soon resume fighting. 'They weren’t strolling down the street. This problem is both big and dangerous. And regrettably, the Iraqi government and the authorities don’t know how big the problem has become.'
"Mahmoud’s assessment of Camp Bucca, which funneled 100,000 detainees through its barracks and closed months later, would prove prescient. The camp now represents an opening chapter in the history of the Islamic State — many of its leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were incarcerated and probably met there. According to former prison commanders, analysts and soldiers, Camp Bucca provided a unique setting for both prisoner radicalization and inmate collaboration — and was formative in the development of today’s most potent jihadist force.
"In all, nine members of the Islamic State’s top command did time at Bucca, according to the terrorism research firm Soufan Group. Apart from Baghdadi himself, who spent five years there, his deputy, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, as well as senior military leader Haji Bakr, now deceased, and the leader of foreign fighters, Abu Qasim, were incarcerated there, Soufan said. Though it’s likely that the men were extremists when they entered Bucca, the group added, it’s certain they were when they left."
