https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/27/middleeast/isis-leader-baghdadi-preacher-of-hate-intl-hnk/index.html
"How ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became a feared preacher of hate
By Nick Paton Walsh, CNN
Updated at 10:27 AM ET, Sun October 27, 2019
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What we know about ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 04:09
(CNN) — A preacher of hate. The instigator and inspirer of some of the most hideous acts of violence ever put to video. An elusive fugitive, hunted by drones, only once seen in public. The perverter of Islam with a nauseatingly infectious ideology that had a greater lure to a disenfranchised minority than anything comparable since the 1970s.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been all of these, and now -- after he was killed in a raid by US troops -- he leaves behind a trail of ghastly crimes, internecine hatreds and the sad realization that he and his brand of bloodthirsty, loathing ISIS are an ongoing symptom of regional upheaval and failure, and of what the Internet can do to the isolated and deranged."
"Instability in Iraq and civil war in Syria were a gift to Baghdadi's ambitions. The group got organized -- extorting locals, robbing banks, aiming for ever larger attacks, and eventually declaring their caliphate. At the time the pronouncement seemed partially ridiculous to observers: no insurgent group could take and hold territory in the chaos and gunpowder of Syria's conflict. But the caliphate grew, in size and confidence.
Baghdadi himself is thought to have authorized the gruesome execution of American journalist James Foley, whose lurid video provoked the Obama White House to take firmer military action against the group.
Thus began the world's war with ISIS, a group that had become an umbrella mechanism for experienced foreign jihadists seeking a new path in the turmoil of Syria; veteran Iraq insurgents, some with Baathist era military experience; and even adventurous and slightly unhinged war-tourists, ensnared by the adrenaline rush of the combat videos so relentlessly pumped out at the public by Baghdadi's prolific minister for information -- the also deceased Abu Mohammed Adnani.
The group's radical atavistic brutality made the Afghan Taliban at times appear moderate. ISIS beheaded people as if it were a leisure activity; threw gay men from rooftops; encouraged children not only to fight, but also execute adults at close range on video; and burned or drowned people alive in cages. Observing Baghdadi's ISIS, it was easy to imagine that somewhere, some time, they sat in meetings imagining ways in which to out-do their latest, most gut-wrenching atrocity. They had become an experiment in the reaches of human cruelty,"
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