Paris attacks is US failure: Top Democratic lawmaker
A senior Democratic lawmaker says the Paris terror attacks is a failure of the United States and its allies that allowed the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group to establish foothold in Syria and Iraq.
In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said ISIL has successfully adapted to international efforts designed to defeat them, adding that the group could also strike the United States soon.
“The reality is even the best intelligence will not stop a determined enemy that adapts to our defenses,” Schiff said. “And [ISIL] has adapted.”
At least 129 people were killed and over 350 others were injured in multiple coordinated attacks on Friday night in one of the deadliest assaults to hit the French capital since the World War II.
ISIL has claimed responsibility for the attacks, calling them “the first of the storm” and denounced France as a “capital of prostitution and obscenity.”
US President Barack Obama promised to stand by France and said Washington would intensify military coordination and intelligence sharing with Paris in the wake of the Paris massacre.
Representative Schiff said the United States has already been doing that and it has not worked. "I think the implications are this is not just an intelligence failure.”
"It's a failure also of a coalition campaign because we have allowed ISIS to have sanctuary in Syria and Iraq with too much time to plan and plot, too much resources to be directed against us," he said, using an alternative acronym for the terrorist group. "And unless that changes strategically, we can expect more attacks like this.”
“We are a harder target, a harder target to reach, but we know that ISIS aspires to attack us here in the United States as well,” he continued.
ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control parts of Syria and Iraq. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.
The United States and its allies have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria since last year.
Observers say while the US and its allies claim they are fighting against terrorist groups like ISIL, they in fact helped create and train those organizations to affect their policies in the Middle East.
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