Tagged: counter-terrorism

House report says 2017 terror forecast ‘alarming’

(TRUTH REVOLT) — By Mark Tapson

A monthly terror forecast from Homeland Security warns that 2017 “looks alarming” for the U.S. and Europe.

According to Fox News, the House Homeland Security Committee’s February “Terror Threat Snapshot” report predicts that efforts to crush foreign terror groups could cause more attacks on American soil. It cites an “unprecedented spike in the homegrown terror threat, primarily driven by the rise of ISIS,” and warns of “lone wolf” attacks as well as homegrown terrorists who return from fighting in such places as Iraq, Syria and Somalia.

“I am very encouraged that the Trump administration is preparing to put greater pressure on jihadists in their safe havens throughout the world,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul. “But as they do, we can expect to see militants returning to the West to build new networks and to plot more deadly operations.”

The report notes that since the beginning of 2016, there have been plots or attacks by 39 homegrown jihadists in 19 states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Two attacks occurred just last month, a deadly shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport by ISIS-radicalized Esteban Santiago, and the murder of a Denver Regional Transportation District security officer by a suspect carrying jihadist material in his backpack. And the U.S. and Europe could, as Fox News puts it, “continue to reap the bloody tide of what critics call lax counter-terrorism efforts in the past.”

“Unfortunately, over the past eight years of the Obama administration, the ideological counter-measures were removed and, therefore, the level of radicalization peaked to the levels acknowledged in this report,” says Walid Phares, who advised Trump on foreign policy throughout the campaign. “More jihadis mean more potential attacks — this is what we are facing now.”

[READ MORE]