The Growing Strategic Threat of ISIS

ISIS occupies a vast territory. It wants to "carve out a zone of governing territory that would run from Baghdad to Syria to Lebanon." It holds an estimated $2 billion in assets. There has never been in history a terrorist organization as well funded as this terror group. ISIS has used the "virtual caliphate" on the Internet to recruit foreign fighters at an "unprecedented rate." Twenty thousand foreign fighters from 90 countries now make up the ranks of ISIS and, according to intelligence estimates, this includes 3,400 from the West and more than 150 Americans on the ground fighting for ISIS today. The administration's de facto partnership with Assad ensures that Syria will continue to be a terrorist breeding ground for groups like ISIS and we will never be victorious that way. A big part of the administration's ISIS strategy is to train and equip a program that seems to enhance the capability of moderate Syrian opposition leaders, yet that program hasn't really started yet. Town after town has fallen to ISIS across Syria and across Iraq, and over the past 12 months the ISIS threat has only continued to grow.