Sharyl
Attkisson interviews Steve Emerson on how the Arab Spring created an ideal
environment for terrorism to grow and thrive
by Steve Emerson
Full Measure
November 15, 2015
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Sharyl Attkisson: It turns out the Arab spring movement created
an environment for terrorism to grow and thrive. Steve Emerson is one of
the worlds leading experts on radical Islamic terrorist groups. He leads
the nonprofit Investigative Project on Terrorism but first let's listen to
what president Obama said earlier this week about ISIS.
President Obama
video clip: I don't think they're gaining strength. What is true is that
from the start our goal has been first to contain and we have contain them.
They have not gained ground in Iraq and in Syria they'll come in they'll
leave but you don't see the systematic march by ISIL across the terrain.
Attkisson: What's your response to President Obama's comment?
Steve Emerson: I'm pretty shocked because last year he called it
the JV squad. To call it contained... our intelligence on on the ground is
so poor we have no idea about the number of fighters that are coming in
from Europe every month nor do we know about the number of fighters that
are coming in from Lebanon. And as far as being contained the territory
shifts literally every week. So if he is saying contained maybe it's
contained for that one moment. And frankly the notion that it's contained
suggests that it's contained politically around the world and as we see in
France it's not contained.
Attkisson: You've spoken to a lot of insiders in the government
and also FBI agents what are they telling you about everything now?
Emerson: Well first of all I think off the record, well on
background, FBI agents who want to retain their jobs are expressing
exasperation at the fact that they do not have a handle and do not believe
that headquarters has a handle or this administration has a handle on ISIS.
Attkisson: Administration officials - one of them told me three years
ago on background that this sort of Islamic extremist terrorism was coming,
obviously it was in the Middle East, coming to Africa, then they said
Europe was next and then the U.S. Why was that so predictable and why have
we seemed so utterly unable to do anything about it?
Emerson: Listen, history repeats itself. If you look at what
happened in the 1990s you saw the bombing in 1993 of the World Trade
Center, it receded, then you saw the bombing of the USS Cole, you saw the
bombings of the embassies in 1998 and then you saw the bombing of the World
Trade Center. You saw the same pattern. It came back to us. They revisit
the scene of the crime. We're going to see it again. The fact that they
succeeded – eight guys with seven hand grenades, six Kalashnikovs have been
able to paralyze an entire country with the third largest powerful military
in the world what do you think that tells them? That tells them that they
can do almost anything.
Attkisson: Steve Emerson thank you so much.
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