Pete Hoekstra

Washington, Oct 12 -

U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the latest edition of Inspire, the radical jihadist propaganda magazine, is mostly a rehash of familiar terrorist themes, with an emphasis on individual jihad and Western recruits.

“The latest edition of Inspire is not very inspiring,” Hoekstra said. “The call for lunch-counter attacks in Washington, D.C. is alarming, but consistent with the type of smaller-scale terrorist attacks that al-Qaeda and its affiliates are seemingly focused on these days. Overall, the themes and messages of this edition are a repeat of the ones we saw in the first edition, repackaged in the same slick, glossy style as before. The target audience remains the same, easily swayed radicals that may be inclined to launch one-off, lone-wolf attacks.”

Hoekstra noted that in addition to the direct threat to eateries in the nation’s capital, the interviews of former Guantanamo Bay detainees about their return to jihad should serve as a warning for the Obama administration about the risks of its continued push to close the terrorist detention facility.  He pointed out that the recently enacted Democrat intelligence bill was stripped of Republican-backed prohibitions against bringing terrorist detainees into the United States and giving foreign terrorists the rights of U.S. citizens.

“Playing terrorist catch and release is a bad policy for the safety of our homeland and our armed forces and citizens overseas,” Hoekstra said. “The steady drumbeat of reports about former Gitmo detainees re-engaging in jihad is loud enough now that it can’t be ignored. If Inspire should inspire anything, it should be for the administration to keep Gitmo open, stop its expansion of terrorist rights, and to put an end to detainee transfers to countries where they can launch attacks against our people.”