(Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing)

Salon

Like clockwork, the Republican noise machine is blaming Barack Obama for the crisis in Iraq. And like clockwork, they’ve got everything wrong again.

The man to blame for what’s happening in Iraq is not President Obama — it’s President Bush.

Contrary to Tony Blair’s latest protestations, the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq — under deliberately fraudulent pretenses – had a great deal to do with enabling the current emergence of a Sunni terrorist military power in Iraq, but it goes much deeper than that. The recent success of ISIS — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — is exactly what Osama bin Laden had hoped that the 9/11 attacks would lead to. And thanks to Bush’s spectacularly foolish responses, bin Laden’s dream has come true.

Before 9/11, bin Laden was a terrorist and could only dream of becoming the “holy warrior” he imagined himself to be…