With the partisan blame game over the current meltdown in Iraq consuming much of the media's attention, NBC News' chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel is reporting on the increased terrorism threat Americans face from ISIS radicals as they establish a stronghold in the crisis-stricken country. Engel -- who was kidnapped and released in Syria in 2012 -- tweeted a series of disquieting assessments from US national security sources (via Noah Rothman): Engel's sources say that roughly 70 American nationals have taken up arms with ISIS in the region over the course of the violent unrest, with about a dozen "currently active:" McClatchy reported last week that thousands of Europeans have joined the jihad in Syria, and now Iraq -- worrying counter-terrorism officials, who call the 'tourism terrorism' numbers "unprecedented:" At least 320 Germans and more than 2,000 other Europeans are thought to have made the trip -- so many that last week Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan asked European nations to stop their citizens wanting to join the fight in Syria and now Iraq from traveling to Turkey...European Union Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove this month noted that the phenomenon of young Muslims leaving Europe to fight elsewhere is decades old. But the current numbers dwarf previous migrations. He described the current flow as huge. Compared to previous jihads, its unprecedented, he said. The trend is openly discussed in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Italy. Europe has long needed immigrant labor, but it has done little to integrate those who come from Muslim regions--North Africa, Pakistan and the Middle East. Their children often grow up without close ties to their adopted nations and end up finding a sense of community online and in the radical splinters of Islam set up to prey upon the lost.....snip~ http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guyben...ear-isis-threat-to-us-extremely-high-n1857467 What say ye?
