We have repeatedly chronicled how the policies of the the Obama administration are directly responsible for the rise of ISIS and because of that bears partial responsibility for the slaughter that has raged in Syria and Iraq over the past two years. In short, the misbegotten embrace of “Arab Spring” destabilized Syria while creating an al Qaeda safe haven in the power vacuum we created in Libya. At the same time, we ignored Iraq. We not only ignored the national government but we also ignored what that government was telling us about the rise of ISIS. As it turns out the story is much more sordid. Not only was the administration warned of the rise of ISIS in Syria, but it threatened retribution against any rebel group who mentioned this to western media:

Two months before Mosul and other cities in northern Iraq fell to the Islamic State last June, representatives of a Syrian rebel group called on the new U.S. special envoy for Syria with an outline of a plan to stop the extremists.

The group urged the U.S. to shift its focus to eastern Syria, where the Islamic State had emerged from Raqqa and other towns under its control and begun military operations to capture Deir el Zour province.

If Islamic State fighters seized the region’s oil and gas resources, they’d gain enough power to destroy the U.S.-backed rebel forces across northern Syria and link the swath of territory they held in Syria to that under their control in Iraq’s restive Anbar province

“Ultimately,” they said in a written memo, using a common abbreviation for the Islamic State, “this will lead to an expansion of ISIS to reach neighboring countries as well . . . bringing it closer to establish the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”

The State Department had no comment on the April meeting. “We do not discuss details of our diplomatic contacts and outreach,” said spokesman Michael Lavallee.