John Kerry says ISIS attacked Istanbul airport because they are desperate and know they are losing

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attack at the Istanbul airport which killed at least 41 people and wounded 239 others, Turkish and U.S. officials said it was likely the work of ISIS.

Speaking Tuesday evening at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Secretary of State Kerry said the fact that ISIS is targeting airports is a sign of weakness by the terror group, which he referred to by the name Daesh.

The attack, now widely seen as an ISIS operation, is actually a sign the Islamic State is on the run, Kerry claimed.

After all, he said, ISIS hasn’t launched a full-scale military offensive in more than a year.

“And if you’re desperate and if you know you are losing,” he added, “then you’ll be more open to launching attacks in which “you can do some harm.”

That, as Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) noted, simply “defies reality.” After all, he pointed out, Kerry and President Obama have said ISIS is “on the run for many years, and they’re not — they’re on the rise.”

The group is losing ground in Iraq and Syria, but it now has at least five other major active branches on several continents.

Obama, of course, famously dismissed ISIS as a “JV team” as it began its rapid expansion in Iraq, then later boasted that it had been “contained” just hours before ISIS plotters killed 100 innocents in Paris.

And it continues to inspire deadly lone-wolf attacks like San Bernardino and Orlando, leading to what McCaul calls “an unprecedented pace of terror.”

As it is, the death toll in Istanbul would’ve likely been even higher had an airport security officer not given his life by wrestling one of the three terrorists — who sported AK-47s and explosive vests — to the ground.

Kerry would do well to review what CIA Director John Brennan told Congress this month: US efforts on the battlefield, he said, “have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach.”

קישורים:
'Defies reality': Kerry takes heat for claiming airport attack a sign of ISIS desperation

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!