The deadly suicide attack that killed four Americans, including two U.S. service members, in Syria on Jan. 16, comes about two weeks after new House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) abolished a key subcommittee on terrorism. The ISIS terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack. Not to mention the now constant stream of thwarted jihad plots in the homeland.
Americans Killed in ISIS-Claimed Syria Attack Weeks After House Terrorism Panel Abolished
By Mark Tapscott, Epoch Times, January 16, 2019 Updated: January 16, 2019
The deadly suicide attack that killed four Americans, including two U.S. service members, in Syria on Jan. 16, comes about two weeks after new House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) abolished a key subcommittee on terrorism. The ISIS terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack.
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Engel’s first official act as chairman on Jan. 3, when Democrats officially regained the House majority, was replacing the terrorism subcommittee with one focused on investigating President Donald Trump.
Engel justified the move because “there wasn’t a great clamor” to continue the terrorism panel, formerly known officially as the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Proliferation, and Trade. It was one of the panel’s busiest subcommittees under Engel’s predecessor, Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.).
“We just thought, if we’re going to do something relevant in this era where Congress is going to reassert itself, where there are so many questionable activities of this administration vis-à-vis foreign policy, that it made sense to have this,” Engel told The New Yorker.
Engel characterized investigating Trump as “indispensable to the foreign-policy concerns of the day,” including what he called the president’s “hard-to-fathom Russia tilt” and Trump relatives’ “pursuit of business deals” in the Middle East.
Engel’s committee spokesman, Tim Mulvey, was unavailable for comment early Jan. 16, but analysts told The Epoch Times the ISIS attack demonstrates anew that the terrorist threat to the United States remains real.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the committee’s ranking minority member, said: “today’s deadly bombing targeting our troops in Syria is a reminder that ISIS still has the capacity to carry out attacks.” He also urged Trump not to remove U.S. troops from Syria, as the president recently decided to do.
McCaul has also “strongly urged” Engel to reconsider the terrorism subcommittee decision, according to a senior congressional aide who asked not to be identified.
Other terrorism experts also urged Engel to rethink the action.
“It kind of plays into a fear I already had, which was that because this territory has been taken back from ISIS in Syria and because we haven’t had a kind of catastrophic attack in the West since Barcelona in 2017 is that we think all of a sudden that we don’t need to pay as much attention to it, that we can move on,” Robin Simcox told The Epoch Times. Simcox is the Margaret Thatcher Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute on National Security and Foreign Policy. He specializes in terrorism and national-security issues.
Simcox questioned the wisdom of Engel’s decision, saying “one thing we can say we’ve not had a lack of in D.C. in the last couple of years is a focus on Trump and his connections to Russia … it’s a topic almost of national obsession. The idea that we should focus more on that seems to me odd, to say the least.”
The Heritage analyst pointed to the Syria attack as evidence that ISIS and al Qaeda, the radical Islamic terrorist group behind the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, “are still going to be a great concern to us for many years to come. The ideology that animates these terrorist groups is going to be a great concern and now is not the time for more domestic navel-gazing.”
Committees like the terrorism subcommittee exist because a conversation is needed on “what does the terrorism threat look like in one year’s time, in five years time, in 10 years time and how do we need to prepare for that,” Simcox continued.
Robert Spencer, the founder of Jihad Watch, an advocacy group that documents Islamic terrorism, told The Epoch Times he doubts Engel will change course on the abolished subcommittee as a result of the U.S. bloodshed in Syria.
“No jihad terror attacks, or even a proliferation of jihad terror attacks, will convince Eliot Engel and his ilk that jihad terror is a problem that must be addressed,” Spencer said.
The foreign affairs chairman, like other Democratic leaders, Spencer said, “is focused mono-maniacally on destroying Trump. Every other issue must take a back seat to that.”
But Engel claims his committee can continue to devote needed attention to terrorism, telling Fox News Friday that “of course the committee will still deal with the threat of terrorism. In fact, we’re expanding the jurisdiction of our subcommittees for different parts of the world to include terrorism so they’re better able to grapple with this problem with a regional focus.”
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Jay Wizzy
5 years ago
How much territory gain do we see lately by Muhammadists? Europe after Muhammadist Hitler*, Philippines, Nigeria, North-Sudan, Mosques in the USA, Muhammadist censors on USA-social media, Saudi Arabia owns Twitter, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Cyprus, Russia, South-America.
& how much gain did we, the Non-muhammadists gain? Only losses.
& what comes after we defeat Inbred society ISIS Islamistisis? Muhammadist censors that prohibit us to speak freely & the truth about unjust Muhammad? Muhammadist censors like Twitter-fan Trump who says Pamela Geller would insult everybody?
We should use armed drones in Syria instead of endangering soldiers & we should never give up territory to Muhammadists.
What every soldier, student, citizen should know:
Africans are enslaved, castrated, divorced, beaten & killed today in Saudi Arabia & enslaved in the UAE, Oman, Yemen, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, North-Sudan, Libya (surge), Algeria (surge), Mauritania (20 percent), Niger, Mali, Somalia, Nigeria in emulation of unjust Muhammad who started the global African slave-trade by saying his unproven deity had turned Africans black so Africans’ descendants would be slaves to Arabs & Turks (see Wikiislam).
Unjust Muhammad burned people for not praying, enslaved Africans, crucified critics, commanded the lifelong torture of clitodirectomy, forced theism on anyone, raped, tortured, declared war on atheists, Jews & all other Non-muhammadists & ‘kissed’ penises of boys & sucked boys’ tongues & lips.
*,Hitler viewed the unjust Muhammadism as ultimate Nazi religion that as he told his architect & minister of war Albert Speer matches the German temperament better & many Nazi criminals openly converted to the unjust Muhammadism after the war & worked for the Egyptian Muhammadist tyranny under Nasser or in Syria.
Nazi Dr. Alois Brunner for example who killed 130,000 Jews & others, openly converted to the unjust Muhammadism in Syria where he with Hafez El Assad organized Syria’s secret services on the model of the Gestapo.
Organizing the new Muhammadist United Arab Republic of Syria he lived in the embassy district of Damascus at 7 George Haddad. In 1961, when Adolf Eichmann was captured by the Israelis in Buenos Aires, Brunner received a bomb-letter, probably from the Mossad & lost an eye.
He was seen in 2001 protected by the Muhammadist regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Refering to the extermination of Jews & the implementation of the unjust Muhammad-law Brunner interviewed by German magazine Bunte in 1985 said: “I regret that I didn’t finish the job”.
felix1999
5 years ago
DEMS want us attacked here and abroad.
Dems Nix Subcommittee on Terrorism; Will Investigate Trump Instead
BY CLARION PROJECT Sunday, January 13, 2019
The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism will now be replaced with a subcommittee to investigate President Trump, said the Democratic representative who now controls the House Foreign Affairs committee.
In a conversation with the The New Yorker, Eliot Engel (D-NY) said there “wasn’t a great clamor” to keep the subcommittee on terrorism since the Democratic party regained the majority in the House of Representatives.
“Trump, in other words, is a bigger threat than terrorism. At least for now,” summed up The New Yorker.
According to Engel, the subcommittee will now investigate what the Democrats consider foreign policy scandals on the part of Trump.
“We just thought, if we’re going to do something relevant in this era where Congress is going to reassert itself, where there are so many questionable activities of this Administration vis-à-vis foreign policy, that it made sense to have this,” Engel said.
Top on Engel’s list of investigations is what Trump agreed to in his private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin,
Trump’s business interests and their effect on foreign policy,
Trump’s relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un,
Trump’s relationship with the Saudi crown prince
the death of Qatari asset and Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and
Trump’s recent decision to pull American troops out of Syria.
CNN and MSM canonises this pro-jihadi RINO while Egyptian media expose him for being Leading supporter of Muslim Brotherhood in America and Middle east https://tinyurl.com/y9hk3dpk
Its absurd and farcical how MSM Lies and brainwashes American citizens
I guess we can hope that – when – the next terrorist attack occurs in this country it takes out some of the morons who voted that POS into office –
patd
5 years ago
Well the libturds didn’t like the counsel investigating them….they are terrorist just like the muslims.
Dan Knight
5 years ago
Dems are not worried … statistically three of those four dead Americans voted Republican …
Now all four of them will vote Demokkkrat.
Meanwhile … normal Americans are thinking …
G-d bless our heroes and may we meet them again in the Undiscovered Country …
Buck
5 years ago
Democrats should never have gotten back into power of a y kind. I think it was vote fraud
volksnut
5 years ago
The isis threat remains real – hmmm now lets see how long has islam been at war with everyone else? 1400 years ? and how long has isis been around?
762x51FMJ
5 years ago
Deep State operatives still work for Brennan and Obama, probably ordered the bombing.. the same people who pulled off the phoney gas attacks to get US into Syria in the first place..
Someone ordered the bombing to keep us in Syria the timing is too convenient after all the US was pulling out of Syria why would ISIS want us to stop pulling out and go on an offensive?. the same people who deposed Mubarek, killed Gadaffi, and sent arms from Benghazi to Syria and created ISIS.. The same people who brought death and destruction to a vast portion of the earth..
These destroyers of humankind.
The Democrat Party.
DVader
5 years ago
A more accurate headline would be “Islamic State Kills Four Americans After Trump Declares Islamic State Defeated.”
Organized isis is different from some individual attack claimed by isis. But then again ignorant libturds would rather have the POS anti-American muslim sitting in our WH giving the biggest state of terror billions of dollars and kissing every muslim leader’s ass around the world. STFU and get lost EBT boy.
patd
5 years ago
Too bad they didn’t make their way to ca to take out swalwell, feinstein, piglosi and the rest of the libturds!
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