The French have now confirmed what we already knew about the attack on the U.S. gas factory last week: ISIS was behind it:
The man who beheaded his boss and tried to blow up a U.S.-owned gas factory in Lyon last week had a "terrorist motive" and links to the Islamic State (ISIS) group in Syria, a French prosecutor confirmed Tuesday.
The investigation "indicates a terrorist motive in Yassin Salhi's act, even though it is justified by personal considerations," said Paris chief prosecutor Francois Molins.
Salhi took two photos of the macabre beheading scene and sent them almost immediately to a friend in Syria, and the friend had requested permission from ISIS militants to distribute the snapshots, Molins said.
Salhi, thirty-five, a truck driver with a history of radical Islamic ties dating back to 2003, was arrested Friday shortly after he rammed his gas-filled delivery van into a warehouse at the Air Products factory that contained dangerous chemicals, causing an explosion.
Firefighters alerted by the blast found him trying to open gas bottles inside the factory, shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), before making the grisly discovery of the severed head of Salhi's fifty-four-year-old boss, Herve Cornara.
Or, in other words, it was a "terrorist motive" so blatantly obvious that even the French could parse it,
Meanwhile, the alarm chorus about the vulnerability of the U,S. electrical grid to jihadist attack continues to grow:
The possibility of a terrorist attack on the nation's power grid — an assault that would cause coast-to-coast chaos — is a very real one, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen tells Newsmax TV....
And Cohen, a former GOP senator from Maine and chairman and CEO of The Cohen Group, said it wouldn't even be necessary for terrorists to wreak havoc by way of an EMP attack in which a burst of electromagnetic radiation wipes out most of the nation's power.
"You can do it through cyberattacks and that's the real threat coming up as well.... We have to look at cyberattacks being able to shut down our power grid, which you have to remember is in the private sector's hands, not the governments. And we're vulnerable," he said.
Last month, Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, a former top CIA analyst told Newsmax TV that the United States is a sitting duck for a terror attack that could wipe out the nation's power grid and kill as many as nine out of ten Americans.
However, Western governing authorities' dhimmi yellow streak remains impenetrable, as British Prime Minister David Cameron went out of his way to redundantly illustrate:
British Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC Radio 4 the Islamic State (ISIS) is not what its name implies during an interview Monday.
"I wish BBC would stop calling it Islamic State because it's not an Islamic State," Cameron said. "What it is is an appalling, barbarous regime. It is a perversion of the religion of Islam. Many Muslims listening to this program will recoil when they hear the words Islamic State.
"ISIL is better. But it is an existential threat because what's happening here is the perversion of a great religion and a creation of this poisonous death cult."
Even though that "great religion" IS "this poisonous death cult," is already taking over Great Britain, and ISIS is headed straight in Prime Minister Cameron's direction. Maybe when the Muzzies behead him, he can pretend they're using a soup spoon instead of a dagger or an ax.
Ditto the United States and its imperious leader, who is again showing that his determinedly malevolent obtusity exceeds even French capitulational capacities by pointedly blowing off and downplaying the warnings of an Independence Day ISIS strike:
The White House was wrong to dismiss the government's own July 4th weekend terror warning as "standard operating procedure," former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said.
The comment, made by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, wasn't accurate, Ridge said Monday on Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto.
"It's a real threat. I think it's a permanent threat," Ridge said. "I think this is a scourge with which we're going to have to deal with … for the foreseeable future."
Former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell also called on Americans to take the threat seriously.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we're sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States. That's how serious this is," Morell said on Monday.
Unless the United State takes a more aggressive stance against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), the July 4th warning made by the FBI, Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center "may ultimately become a standard warning, i.e. we're at risk all the time," Ridge said. [emphasis added]
That's already the case, Mr. Ridge, and it's growing all the time,
"It's a real threat. I think it's a permanent threat," Ridge said. "I think this is a scourge with which we're going to have to deal … for the foreseeable future."
Until one or more of our enemies finish wiping us out, anyway,
You know what? I hope the White House is right, I hope their devil-may-care attitude proves to be justified, and the Independence Day holiday weekend passes quietly (aside from the fireworks) and completely without incident. It's not like any of us would be complaining if it did.
But it's the job of the president of the United States to assume the worst, to think of every conceivable threat and prepare for it, and to not BS the public into indolent complacency when a clear and present danger is, well, clear and present and likely, Or, to put it in terms that they would be much more likely to understand, if the White House pooh-poohs a large-scale jihadist threat that then fully materializes, The One will experience the mother of all PR blowbacks.
But then, they're probably assuming the usual "rally around the flag" effect.
You know, the flag that they're moving towards getting banned,
Exit question: Odds on "tough diplomacy" succeeding in resolving a U.S.-ISIS confrontation in the wake of a radiological attack on Chicago? I'd say at least 50-50, right?
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