About ISIS
ITS ACTIONS SO FAR AND ITS THREAT TO AMERICA
Starting in early June of this year, the terrorist organization ISIS, virtually unknown until then, launched a surprise offensive into northern Iraq and in less than a month overran a third of that embattled nation. They also captured and held global attention. For those who were watching closely, their actions sickened and terrorized as well.
Barbaric mass murderers of the twentieth century have tended to commit their atrocities “off camera:” the Nazi death camps, the gulag of Stalin, the killing fields of Cambodia, and the massacres of Rwanda. ISIS, in contrast, has widely broadcast their atrocities and turned social media upside down by embracing it. The cell phone and tablet have become weapons as effective as an AK-47 for spreading fear. They openly post videos of mass executions, beheadings, of setting victims on fire and gleefully crucifying Christians. Their terror display cowers those trapped behind their lines into submission.
They promise to bring this horror to America.
Our schools, since Columbine, have been a source of anxiety for all Americans, with intense national debate as to how best to protect our children from attacks by lone psychotic “shooters,” who, in almost every case, commit suicide once the police arrive. Our entire education system has, as a result, trained and conditioned itself for how to face such a single-handed attack. In Day of Wrath the author presents a far more terrifying scenario: a team of trained terrorists strike a number of schools at the exact same moment with the sole intent of killing as many children as possible. The casualty rate would rise to thousands in little more than an hour.
ISIS terrorists have already demonstrated the grim determination to commit this scale of mass murder. In early August they released videos of infants and toddlers being shot and decapitated as well as other videos of boys as young as seven proudly holding up the severed head of one of their victims. Their boast is that such horrors will be unleashed here as well.
Their method of entry? The fact that security along our southern border is in tatters is evident to all. In August 2014, Congress members openly said that at least one hundred terrorists associated with ISIS are already within our country.
In 2001, Osama bin Laden boasted that his day of triumph cost him little more than half a million dollars. During the spring offensive by ISIS into Iraq it is estimated that they seized at least half a billion dollars in hard assets, not paper money, such as gold and silver. Connect that money to the Mexican cartels that are engaged in smuggling along our southern border, and the path for terrorists into our country opens wide.
Again, the goal: to demonstrate to America and to the world how vulnerable we are to this small, yet terrifyingly murderous sect bent on establishing a new caliphate in the Middle East. They want to bring prestige to their cause far beyond that accomplished by bin Laden.
An exceptional article about what ISIS really wants can be found at: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
The following links are offered with the strongest possible warning. View them at your discretion but please realize that you will be viewing highly disturbing material that is DEFINITELY inappropriate for those under eighteen years old. Please proceed with that understanding clearly in mind. These are images that you will find impossible to erase from your mind once seen, so please think carefully before viewing. Realize that these images represent what is happening NOW and what they are threatening to bring to our country and our allies.
http://www.elderstatement.com/2014/06/warning-extremely-graphic-video-footage.html
http://www.catholic.org/news/international/middle_east/story.php?id=56339