How The US Helped ISIS Grow Into a Monster

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. This essay is excerpted from the first chapter of Patrick Cockburn's new book, The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising, with special thanks to his publisher, OR Books. The first section is a new introduction written for TomDispatch. There are extraordinary elements in the present US policy in Iraq and Syria that are attracting surprisingly little attention. In Iraq, the US is carrying out air strikes and sending in advisers and tr...