From sitting down with West Timorese, to spending endless hours with the Afghan Taliban; to have sat with Al Qaeda after 9/11 I've always found myself crossing into the unknown - to the darker recesses.
The first ever attack, the Islamic State carried out was in August 2003 on the Jordanian Embassy. ISIS, in its history, has had or four different names. It's had four different leaders. But it was all started by one man, the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al Zarqawi who the U.S. killed in June 2006.
Abu Musab al Zarqawi had such a view of holy war. More barbaric, more monstrous even than Osama bin Laden. So much so that Bin Laden opposed many of his ideas. And he did not join al Qaeda, except for one brief period after 2004 where he agreed to be badged as al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
We had one moment in history where we were disseminating what we now call the Islamic State. That's when we finally cut the deal with the insurgents.
That's precisely what I did. Let's not forget Raqqa is not the first capital of the Islamic State. The first capital of the Islamic State when it was called the Islamic State was the Iraqi city of Ramadi. And the only way I was able to access that city was by going in with American marines and soldiers who were desperately fighting for their lives.
