French Jihadi Mehdi Nemmouche Is the Shape of Terror to Come - The Daily Beast:
Veteran terrorism expert Brian Jenkins notes the alarmism in
Washington has reached such proportions, there’s a kind of “shock and
awe in reverse.” Thus, as Jenkins writes,
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel proclaims ISIS is an “imminent threat to
every interest we have.” A congressional staffer argues that it is
“highly probable ISIS will…obtain nuclear, chemical, biological or other
weapons of mass death…to use in attacks against New York [or]
Washington.” Texas Governor Rick Perry claims there is a “very real
possibility” that ISIS forces may have crossed the U.S.-Mexican border.
Senator James Inhofe asserted, “We are in the most dangerous position
we’ve ever been in as a nation,” and retired Marine four-star Gen. John
Allen goes so far as to say, “World War III is at hand.”
All this plays to the advantage of the self-proclaimed Caliph
Ibrahim, formerly known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose ragtag army
conquered a huge swathe of Iraq mainly by filling the vacuum left by
incompetent Iraqi government military commanders. The conquest—and the
reaction to it—have given him an aura of invincibility that holy-warrior
wannabes find quite thrilling.