Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday said that the terrorist attacks in France last week show that attacks against the U.S. are still a threat.
“Although there’s not a specific credible threat that I can point to, I certainly think that the environment has changed over the years. We have decimated core Al Qaeda and I think we have decreased if not eliminated their ability to do the kinds of things that they did on September the 11th,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“On the other hand, when one looks at what happened here in France with a relatively small number of people, when we look at some incidents that have happened in other parts of the world, when we look at what’s happened in the United States, we have a very small number of people, without huge amounts of planning, without huge amounts of resources, inflicting very severe damage,” Holder continued.
But he also said that there is no indication that there will be attacks against the U.S. linked to the attacks in Paris.
“I don’t think that we have any information that would indicate, certainly with regard to the homeland, that there is any ongoing threat or any threat that was activated by what we see so tragically here in France,” he said.
ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked holder if the U.S. is “at war with radical Islam.”
“I certainly think that we are at war with those who would commit terrorist attacks and who would corrupt the Islamic faith in the way that they do, to try to justify their terrorist actions,” Holder responded.
Holder said it’s not yet clear which terrorist group was behind the attacks in Paris.
“At this point, we don’t have any credible information that would allow us to make a determination as to which organization was responsible,” he said.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the two brothers in Paris, like the two brothers in the Boston Marathon bombing, we’re lone wolves inspired by extremist rhetoric but not part of any organized terrorist group. In other words, I suspect we may find out the Paris tragedy was due to two mutually-reinforcingindividuals rather than foot soldiers taking orders from higher ups.
And I suspect there are many, many more such people in France, in the United States, and throughout the world. If our nations’ and cooperative intelligence efforts are aimed primarily at tracking groups, then we’ll continue to miss these one-or-two here-and-there killers.
What you describe seems to be case, there are organized terrorist groups ready to go in the is country. My hope is that the new Congress with its hatred of this administration and its reluctance to allocate funds for anything connected to government but instead is eager to cut spending will provide whatever financial resources are requested. Can we hope and dream for that to happen?
prosecute petreaus. if you do not have the balls to prosecute the rich and powerful, then this gov’t is not a equal gov’t. crap, the non-rich with no power are getting prosecuted for saying mean things on facebook.
meet the press is terrible. i just watched a panel of two conservatives, one idiot (adrea Mitchell), and some reporter who babbles. so i just heard a conservative say we need the nsa to spy on americans and the idiot moderator did not say anything. meet the press needs to be retired, because you can only watch it for about ten minutes at most.
The only thing that stands a chance of thwarting self-activated plots motivated by extremist rhetoric on the Internet is the kind of intrusive constant domestic communications surveillance many people were (wrongly) led to believe already exists. We have the capability to do it, but whether anyone wants to believe it or not, FISA limits what’s done with it. And if the brakes were ever taken off of it, the slippery slope from using it to stop terror plots to using it to interdict major drug shipments to using it to bust people for selling a couple of grams of weed and, ultimately, keeping tabs on political speech, is steep and obvious.
This was very different, these people were clearly part of a Yemeni group, and likely the car bombing the same day in Yemen was tied in. These guys were also much more professional in their approach, and were well trained. The Boston morons just dropped two backpacks with homemade bombs in a crowded place, not too complex. These guys scoped the place out, picked their targets, etc. Definitely two very different things, these were not lone wolves.