Level With U.S. About Threats

A Garland Police Officer stands guard at the road leading to Naaman Forest High School and Curtis Culwell Center after a fire alarm was called at the high school, Tuesday, May 5, 2015, in Garland, Texas. A man whose social media presence was being scrutinized by federal authorities was one of two suspects in the Sunday shooting at this location that hosted a cartoon contest featuring images of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
A Garland Police Officer stands guard at the road leading to Naaman Forest High School and Curtis Culwell Center after a fire alarm was called at the high school, Tuesday, May 5, 2015, in Garland, Texas. A man whose social media presence was being scrutinized by federal authorities was one of two suspects in the Sunday shooting at this location that hosted a cartoon contest featuring images of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Instead of assuring the American people it is doing everything it can to eliminate the threat of the Islamic State in the United States, the White House has been doing its best this week to play down any connection of the shooting in Garland, Texas, last Sunday with the Middle East terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for it.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest went so far as to say the shooting was "what appears to be an attempted terrorist attack."

But since the gunmen actually opened fire, and were killed after doing so, there was nothing attempted about it. And since it occurred outside a building hosting a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest and was perpetrated by men already being watched by the government, there is little doubt it was a terrorist attack.

Of course, this is nothing new for the White House, which has eschewed stringing together any combination of the words "radical" "Islamic" and "terrorism" when such attacks have fit at least some combination of the three words.

Earnest was right to say there was uncertainty about whether the attack was directly related to the Islamic State, but belittling the scope of the event doesn't make people feel safer and doesn't speak to the probability there are Islamic State sympathizers around the country willing to carry out similar attacks.

Indeed, an online warning this week from a self-described American jihadist claimed "trained soldiers" were available in 15 states ready to perpetrate additional attacks. It named California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan and Virginia as five of the states.

Out of an increasing force of 71 trained soldiers, the message said, 23 have signed up for Garland-type missions that would occur over the next six months.

In February, FBI Director James Corney acknowledged the Bureau is investigating suspects with Islamic States ties in 49 states, though those ties in some cases were linked to radicalized Americans who have shown interest in jihadist websites.

One of the gunmen in Sunday's attack, Elton Simpson, had been arrested in 2010 after a four-year terror investigation. Despite more than 1,500 hours of recorded conversations, including plans to link up with "brothers" in Somalia and talk of fighting nonbelievers for Allah, he was only charged with lying to a federal agent. He was ordered to pay $600 in fines and court fees and was given three years of probation.

The Illinois native had recently used Twitter to make vague threats of attacks on the U.S. and ultimately tweeted about the Garland attack before it happened and his involvement in it.

The other gunman, Nadir Soofi, a Pakistani-American who was born in the Dallas area, was once a pre-med student at the University of Utah but did not earn a degree. Reports said he also had studied in Pakistan and had a long hatred of police.

The two Phoenix roommates drove 1,100 miles from their Phoenix apartment, donned body armor and armed themselves with assault rifles to carry out the attack in the Dallas suburb.

The threats come at a time of year when more illegal immigrants than usual stream into the country through the U.S. Southern border. Administration officials say they have no evidence of a coordinated effort by the Islamic State to enter the U.S. that way, but when some 500,000-700,000 illegal immigrants arrive every year, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the chance of some getting through is not small.

It is unnecessary to return to the Bush-era Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terrorist threat alert to feel safer, but neither is it necessary to play down the threat of terrorism on U.S. soil, as the Obama administration has done.

Nor is it helpful for some pundits to take an almost we-deserved-this stance by saying a display of Muhammad cartoons and a controversial Dutch speaker made Garland a target. When Christians are mocked daily on network television, when blasphemous images of Jesus are worn openly on T-shirts, when the Holocaust is denied, and the same pundits don't condemn those actions, you understand that for some, free speech is only free as far one's personal beliefs extend.

Americans are a hardy people. We understand our Constitution allows people to say disgusting things and display horrible images. We understand there are people living in the country who don't like anything the U.S. stands for. What we don't understand is an administration that would rather toy with words than tell us threats -- and actions -- in the country may be linked to, if not perpetrated by, the Islamic State.

We encourage Obama and his administration to start doing so.

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