Highest-Ranking US Intelligence Officer Openly Admits ISIS Wouldn’t Exist if Not for ‘Dumb’ US War

General Michael Flynn, 56, America’s highest ranking military intelligence officer as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has just dropped a bombshell.

Flynn served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and chair of the Military Intelligence Board from July 24, 2012, to August 2, 2014. Prior to this, he served as assistant director of national intelligence within the Obama Administration.

Since his days within the US government ended in 2014, Flynn has begun to speak out about the murderous and unjust Iraq war and how it has led to the rise of ISIS.

In an interview with Spiegel this week, Flynn made some eye-opening revelations when he confirmed what many of us, outside of the state, already knew — the United State’s foreign policy helped create and foster the growth of terrorism worldwide.

Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark held no punches when they grilled the retired general during their interview.

In 2004, the US had captured the man who would become the Islamic State’s leader, the self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. However, unlike many of the innocent young men still being held in US torture facilities, al-Baghdadi was set free.

When Spiegel asked Flynn why this was done, Flynn replied with the following statement.

We were too dumb. 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 United State’s reckless and murderous rampage throughout the Middle East has led to the rise of a resistance tired of watching their children being blown to a red mist by drone-fired missiles. Unfortunately, these victims of US foreign policy are easily recruited by the psychopaths in the Islamic State.

The reality is that since 9-11, the US and their NATO allies have fostered a breeding ground for extremist and fundamentalist groups. As Americans sat back on their couches and watched the “Shock and Awe” on CNN, the US was sowing the seeds for perpetual war.

They were planting a garden in which a million Bin Ladens would later bloom. General Flynn, now retired, is able to see this.

Below is a portion of the interview in which Flynn goes on to admit that the occupation and subsequent bloodbath in Iraq was a mistake.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The US invaded Iraq even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.

Flynn: First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaida was based. Then we went into Iraq. 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.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Islamic State wouldn’t be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad. Do you regret …

Flynn: … yes, absolutely …

SPIEGEL ONLINE: … the Iraq war?

Flynn: It was a huge error. 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.

Unfortunately, ‘that decision’ which Flynn speaks of resulted in millions of lives lost and has now brought humanity to the brink of total annihilation with the threat of World War III looming on the horizon. 

In spite of Flynn’s admission, he is still unable to see the forest for the trees. When Spiegel asked him how the US should proceed, he said, “The sad fact is that we have to put troops on the ground. We won’t succeed against this enemy with air strikes alone.”

It is a sorry state of affairs that there are still people in this world who think that waging war is a method of stopping war – and most of these people are steering global policy.

ISIS wants war.

Their very existence and stated mission depend on driving a wedge through the ‘grayzone’ or the middle ground and polarizing the world into Muslim vs. Everyone else.

ISIS’s goal from their own publication. A black & white world. What they call “grayzone” is our coexistence zone. pic.twitter.com/dDPqigam4t

— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) November 14, 2015

Unfortunately and predictably, the heads of state in the West have tasted the blood in the water and are now putty in the hands of ISIS.

When your only tool is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. The US has long been a hammer.

“The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.” -Mahatma Gandhi