ANOTHER WARNING ABOUT ISIS – AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has been one of the more clear-headed commentators about the challenges this country faces.  What I like about him is that he seems to proceed from facts, not ideology.  From CNN: 

(CNN) -- An ISIS attack against the West is a question of timing -- "not of inevitably, not of intent," according to the former head of the CIA, retired Gen. Michael Hayden.

Speaking to CNN's Jim Sciutto on "Fareed Zakaria GPS," Hayden said he expects ISIS to attempt an attack on targets in the United States or Europe.

"ISIS is a very powerful local organization, and probably a reasonably powerful regional terrorist organization," Hayden said. "But it's one that has global ambitions -- and it has the tools."

There's no clear consensus inside the intelligence community as to whether ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, is currently capable of striking the West.

That debate came to the forefront last week after the Sunni militant group beheaded American journalist James Foley in retaliation for the airstrikes -- an act that Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA, called the group's "first terrorist attack against the United States," in an interview with CBS.

"It's expressed the intent," Hayden said. "There's no way more powerful way to express their street credentials among the jihadist community than a successful attack against the West."

The U.S. military has conducted targeted airstrikes in order to stop ISIS's progress in the region. The Obama administration initially said the strikes were carried out in order to protect U.S. personnel at the consulate in Irbil, Iraq, and prevent the genocide of the Yazidi people, a religious minority in the country.

COMMENT:  I have a rule of thumb about international threats:  If someone says he wants to kill you, he wants to kill you.  That should be the governing assumption.  When a failed circus clown like Jimmy Carter refers to the murderous Hamas charter as "ancient history," he reminds us of other humorists from the 1930s who dismissed Hitler"s "Mein Kampf" as mere rhetoric. 

I've not seen a single case in international affairs where a threat of death wasn't meant.  True, the perpetrator may not have carried out the threat, possibly because he couldn't, or was stopped, but he meant it.  All crimes begin with intent.

August 25, 2014