Only sources on this I can find is that in a way the US created ISIS by bombing a whole lot of civilians in the region and thus fueling an uprising. Nothing concrete regarding the SAS or Special Forces training them.
to be fair to him every administration funds extremist rebels to get rid of dictators they don't like, a stable enemy is worse for the usa than an unstable one.
the fundamentalist interpretation of the quran is abused by the west, they know they can get better motivated rebels by funding the crazies, when the next dictator has stopped singing from the hymn sheet the situation has calmed enough for that regime to no longer be the crazies and they can find more in some backwater.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bremer#Disbanding_the_Ira...
Cue 15 years of chaos and strife, and the ISIS has fertile ground to sow their seeds of hatred in. A significant fraction of these disgruntled 400 000 army men apparently decided to lend their services to ISIS.
Edit:
to voiceless down voters - of course your standpoint is that doing the above was of no consequence, or maybe even helped delay the creation of ISIS? So absurd...
Edit2:
Se child comment.
Their first issue came with US instating the government that was incompetent, arrogant, and corrupt at the same time.
Even if the original Iraqi militants had no recruits from the army, the would have still a source of credibility to latch on - the hated new Iraqi government
If USA did bother to do just a dime more work on Iraqi welfare than was needed to prevent food riots, and spent more money on Iraq than the initial reconstruction funds, no militant group would simply be there.
I see people will write something like "but US gave N gazillions to Iraqi government for reconstruction." Yes, they gave their N gazillions that were mostly spent by Iraqi officials on buying Cognac and property in UAE
A lot of the ills of Iraq after Saddam fell was due to disbanding of the army. Imho.
As for who made him do it, I don’t know. But as you said, it was idiotic. And that’s worse than evil. Dietrich Bonhoeffer would agree with me.
Leaving the army and power structures in place would have created conditions for a civil war that could have spilled over the entire region. Leaving the defeated minority population to continue ruling over the south and kurds would have been a blood bath.
Disbanding created isis but not disbanding would have been worse. We'll never know how worse things could have gotten.
How would you describe what actually happened?