re: #27 unproven innocence

I’m the one who posited the question.

As someone who studies ME policy and necessarily has come to cover global terrorism, especially by groups like al Qaeda, it’s one that needs to be asked - and it’s one that the intel services and policy makers are trying to figure out as well.

Have we degraded their capabilities to the point where they might be able to carry out attacks like this, or do they still have the ability for mass carnage on a scale as seen on 9/11.

Surely, they are aspiring to those kinds of death tolls, but it may be a lack of available terrorists and/or money that has prevented other mass casualty attacks (combined with law enforcement counter terrorism activities around the world).

Other terror groups seem more capable at killing, but those threats appear to be more regional in aspiration - like Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIL in Iraq/Syria, and Taliban elements in Afghanistan/Pakistan. It is possible that those groups might expand their interest further afield; al Qaeda in Yemen regularly slaughters Muslims in attacks inside that country, but they keep trying to carry out attacks elsewhere (and the attacks in France are being attributed to terrorists claiming to be a part of that group).