From ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan: Early on, [Major General Doug] Stone [who went on to control the entire detention and interrogation program in Iraq] said, he came across a detainee whose listed surname was Baghdadi. There was nothing inherently eyebrow-raising about that — insurgents often take their city or country of origin (or the city or country they’d like people to think they’re from) as a nom de guerre. But this Baghdadi stood apart from others. Stone said, “His name came up on a list of people that I had. They listed him as a guy who had significant al-Qaeda links. The psychologists rated him as someone who was a really strong wannabe — not in the sociopathic category, but a serious guy who [had] a serious plan. He called himself an imam and viewed himself not as a descendant of Muhammad — we had a few of those at Bucca — but someone with a very strong religious orientation. He was holding Sharia court and conducting Friday services from the platform of being an imam.”

This Baghdadi was pensive and hardly a jailhouse troublemaker. “We had hundreds like him in what we termed the ‘leadership category,’” Stone said. “We ended up referring to him as an ‘irreconcilable,’ someone for whom sermons by moderate imams weren’t going to make the slightest difference. So here’s the quiet, unassuming guy who had a very strong religious viewpoint, and what does he do? He starts to meet the ‘generals.’ By that I mean, we had a lot of criminals and guys who were in the Iraqi army who called themselves generals, but they were low-ranking officers in Saddam’s army.” All the high-level former Iraqi military officials and hard-core Baathists, including Saddam himself, were detained at Camp Cropper, another U.S.-run facility based in Baghdad International Airport. Cropper was also the processing center for Bucca detainees. “Some of the generals shared Baghdadi’s religious perspective and joined the takfiris — big beards and all of that.”

Stone said he believes that this man was in fact a decoy sent by ISI to pose as the elusive Abu Omar al-Baghdadi to penetrate Bucca and use his time there to mint new holy warriors. “If you were looking to build an army, prison is the perfect place to do it. We gave them health care, dental, fed them, and, most importantly, we kept them from getting killed in combat. Who needs a safe house in Anbar when there’s an American jail in Basra?” [Continue reading…]