Virtual Jihad – Commentary
May 20, 2008 by national
Filed under Stories of Interest
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The United States has been threatened and attacked by organized, equipped and trained foreign terrorist groups on many occasions. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, bombings of U.S. embassies abroad, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have resulted in a focus on the prevention of the “outsider” or foreign terrorist threat. Terrorist planning, training and operations abroad are widespread and ever-evolving.
The counter-terrorism community is now doubling its efforts to detect and prevent a more recent trend–homegrown terrorists–violent extremist who live legally in Western countries. The threat of homegrown extremists commands pre-emptive action by corporate America.
Michael McConnell, the nation’s Director of National Intelligence, addressed the importance of this threat before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February. “Attacks by ‘homegrown’ extremists inspired by militant Islamic ideology but without operational direction from al-Qaeda will remain a threat to the United States or against U.S. interests abroad,” McConnell testified, adding, that “the spread of [terrorist] Internet sites that provide religious justification for attacks and increasingly aggressive and violent anti-Western rhetoric … all suggest growth of a radical and violent segment among the West’s Muslim populations.”
