No specific, credible intelligence is an ongoing theme with US officials when warning about ISIS possibly doing something, but the absence of evidence isn’t going to stop the top Intelligence officials, testifying to Congress, from hyping the threat.
DIA director Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart testified that ISIS will “attempt direct attacks on the US homeland in 2016,” a prediction that as usual came with no evidence, and also comes amid the latest Pentagon push for an increased budget.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, still in power despite lying to Congress in previous testimony on the NSA, talked up the idea that ISIS is sneaking into the US is refugees, even though this allegation has repeatedly been shot down as totally unfounded.
He also emphasized the several dozen ISIS-linked people the US arrested last year, ignoring that the FBI arrests of these “terrorists” were more or less exclusively people the FBI met online, with FBI informants pretending to be ISIS, gave fake weapons to, and then arrested for possession of those fake weapons in connection with FBI-invented plots.
While ISIS has shown some ability to carry out attacks internationally, the group’s links to attacks inside the US is tenuous, at best, and officials seem only to speak with certitude about the group’s power during these funding pushes.
As if having to choose between any of the current crop of Presidential aspirants wasn’t scary enough, they’re reaffirming the meme that we must be afraid of ISIS even though there have been no evidence of ISIS activity inside the US – except when the FBI and other intelligence agencies want to justify increases to their budgets.
The really scary part is that many Americans take these “prognostications” as gospel and are/will be afraid and will give up as much of their freedom they’re told is required to keep them safe from the bogeyman.
February 8th, 2016 Top US general confirms Pentagon plans for permanent combat role in Afghanistan
US military commanders are preparing to expand US operations in Afghanistan, including through the deployment of more US troops in a front-line combat role and stepped up air strikes, General John Campbell, the outgoing US commander in Afghanistan, told the Washington Post in an interview Friday.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/08/afgh-f08.html