The terror group President Barack Obama threatened to strike in Iraq Thursday evening is itself threatening to strike the American homeland.
“I say to America that the Islamic Caliphate has been established,” Abu Mosa, a spokesman for the terror group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), told VICE Media in a video interview posted online Thursday. “Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq.”
“We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House,” he added.
The video is the first of a multipart series on ISIS VICE Media says it plans to release. VICE Media reporter Medyan Dairieh recently spent three weeks in the ISIS-controlled Syrian city of Raqqa, which the terror group has proclaimed the capital of its newly declared Islamic caliphate.
ISIS’s threat to conquer the United States came before President Obama’s Thursday announcement that he may authorize airstrikes against the terror group in order to protect American personnel in Iraq.
“Today I authorized two operations in Iraq,” the president said in a speech from the White House. “Targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel, and a humanitarian effort to save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water, and are facing almost certain death.”
“To stop the advance on Erbil, I’ve directed our military to take targeted strikes against ISIL terrorist convoys should they move toward the city,” Obama elaborated, using the acronym for another name the terror group is known by, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “We intend to stay vigilant, and take action if these terrorist forces threaten our personnel or facilities anywhere in Iraq, including our consulate in Erbil and our embassy in Baghdad.”
ISIS — which recently began referring to itself simply as the Islamic State — now controls a large swath of territory extending from Syria into Iraq, where it has implemented a harsh form of Islamic law and appears to be committing a genocide against religious minorities who refuse to convert to Islam.