New York Times: Many of Saddam's former men now have positions in IS

President George W. Bush in December 2004 awarded the Presidential Freedom Medal to L. Paul Bremer III. Bremer had ben the highest American in Command in occupied Iraq. During his term he disbanded the regular Iraqi army and removed thousands of Baath-members from their positions. lateron many of them were recruited by Al-Qaeda.   

The New York Times (and The Indepeint) carry an article about the army of the Islamic State (IS/Daesh)  being ''stuffed'' with former Baathist allies of Saddam Hussein: 
 When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join Isis, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe.
Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis who moved in and out of the battlefield in Syria. When Abu Hamza disagreed with fellow commanders at an "Islamic State" meeting last year, he said, he was placed under arrest on the orders of a masked Iraqi man who had sat silently through the proceedings, listening and taking notes.
Abu Hamza, who became the group’s ruler in a small community in Syria, never discovered the Iraqis’ real identities, which were cloaked by code names or simply not revealed. All of the men, however, were former Iraqi officers who had served under Saddam Hussein, including the masked man, who had once worked for an Iraqi intelligence agency and now belonged to the Islamic State’s own shadowy security service, he said.
(For the rest of the article click here)