If these condensed, filtered and forwarded cross-postings are helpful, I will continue to seek out the best of them which are of global and less US-centric interest. Many of the better sources will let you read ten articles monthly without hitting the so-called "pay wall." I am too tight to pay also, but have bookmarked enough sources that my shoot & scoot approach seems to work most of the time.
A good backgrounder on the so-called "mastermind" of the Paris attacks:
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2...aganda.php
European officials have identified Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian man whose parents are from Morocco, as a key suspect in last week’s coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris...
French authorities say Abaaoud is “the presumed mastermind” of the coordinated assault...
The Islamic State interviewed Abaaoud in Dabiq 7, ...its English-language magazine, which was released in February 2015... Dabiq described Abaaoud as “a mujahid being pursued by Western Intelligence agencies for his jihad in Belgium...”
In the Dabiq 7 interview, Abaaoud admitted that he and two accomplices...traveled to Europe “in order to terrorize the crusaders waging war against the Muslims.” He said Belgium was a target as the country “is a member of the crusader coalition attacking the Muslims of Iraq and Shām [Syria]...”
After some difficulties in traveling to Belgium, the three jihadists “were then able to obtain weapons and set up a safe house while we planned to carry out operations against the crusaders,” he claimed...
Abaaoud’s involvement with the Verviers cell and an attack by an Islamic State fighter at a Jewish museum in Belgium in May 2014 belie the common narrative that the Islamic State’s deadly suicide assault in Paris, which left more than 120 people dead, was a radical departure in strategy...
Over the past year, European intelligence officials have explained that several Islamic State plots were thwarted. In September 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron said that Reyaad Khan and Junaid Hussain, two British nationals who were killed in airstrikes in Syria in August, were plotting attacks against the West.
According to Cameron, Khan and Hussain “were British nationals based in Syria who were involved in actively recruiting [Islamic State] sympathizers and seeking to orchestrate specific and barbaric attacks against the West, including directing a number of planned terrorist attacks right here in Britain...”
“We should be under no illusion,” Cameron continued. “Their intention was the murder of British citizens...”
The top leaders of the Islamic State have issued direct threats against the West, including the US. In his very first recorded speech, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State, threatened America...
Abu Muhammad al Adnani, the spokesman for the Islamic State, threatened to strike the US and the “allies of America...” after the US launched its air campaign in Iraq and Syria...
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Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of The Long War Journal. Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.
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