Islamic State Vows a New 9/11 As Obama Yawns
Joshua Van Haften, 34, is booked in Madison, Wisc., on April 8, 2015, in a photo provided by the Dane County Sheriff’s office.
Insecurity: The Islamic State has called on its supporters to carry out another 9/11. With the arrest of several IS suspects in the past two weeks, the threat shouldn’t be taken lightly. So why is the White House playing it down?
In a new, 11-minute video called “We Will Burn America,” ISIS says that it has the financial means and the agents in place to pull off an encore attack inside the American homeland. In fact, it makes a point to say that it has “more resources” than al-Qaida had before 9/11, something that experts do not dispute.
The scenes played repeatedly in the video — of truck bombs exploding and terrorists gunning down shoppers in stores and malls — are chilling, particularly against the backdrop of recent busts of IS suspects.
Some are American Muslim women who had planned to martyr themselves in suicide operations. Others planned to carry out Fort Hood-style attacks against U.S. military bases.
This year alone, more than a dozen American Muslims have been caught plotting to attack targets inside the U.S. on orders from IS, or trying to join IS and its violent jihad in the Middle East. These IS operatives are popping up all over the country now, from New York to Kansas to Wisconsin.
Among recent cases:
• John T. Booker, aka Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, was arrested last week outside a little-used gate at Fort Riley, Kan., with a would-be car bomb. The 20-year-old convert to Islam made a martyrdom video in which he pledged his allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and described a 1,000-pound ammonium nitrate bomb.
In the video, Booker said: “Inshallah, this will kill many kuffar (non-Muslims). This message is to you, America. You sit in your homes and think that this war is just over in Iraq. … We today, we will bring the Islamic State straight to your doorstep. You think this is a game. … When this bomb blows up and kills as many kuffar as possible, maybe then you’ll realize it.”
The criminal complaint says that Booker recently tried to join the U.S. Army to kill his fellow soldiers in an “insider attack” like the one committed by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan in Texas. An accomplice from Topeka, Kan., was arrested in connection to the bomb plot.
• Another American convert, Joshua Ray Van Haften of Madison, Wis., was arrested last week at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport before he could allegedly join IS at its headquarters in Raqqah, Syria. On his Facebook page, the 34-year-old Haften had fantasized about joining other martyrs in “Jannah,” the Muslim paradise, after taking “an eye for an eye.”
