In 53 steps, the ruin and destruction of Iraq

These writers tell it like it is.  Very few of such truth-tellers around these days. There are 53 links backing up everything they state.  I found link 31 very intriguing. Did you know that America armed and funded  a group of Al Qaeda fighters calling themselves "The Sunni Awakening" who were recruited to fight their own Al Qaeda brothers but  within a short span after they got all the $$$$$s, arms and training from the gullible Americans they turned around and  rejoined  their Sunni brothers.(Link 42)  HAHAHAHAHAH.  Talk about American stupidity!!!! 

Peter Gelling, Kyle Kim and Timothy McGrath writing at GlobalPost
....A comprehensive 53-step guide to how the US ruined Iraq. 
Here's the short version: The United States invaded Iraq in 2003, claiming that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had both weapons of mass destruction and connections to Al Qaeda. He had neither. Today, both Saddam Hussein and the United States are gone from Iraq. In their place? Al Qaeda.

This week, an Al Qaeda splinter group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the country's second-largest city — Mosul — and several other towns. Latest reports have the militant group at the gates of Baghdad.

With US-trained Iraqi security forces now frantically fleeing the arrival of the ISIL militants — who are so extreme even Al Qaeda couldn't hang with them, causing the two groups to split — and a central government in total disarray, it's looking bleak. Someone call the Coalition of the Willing!

So how did it all go so wrong? In these 53 steps..........