Did The Islamic State 'Order' The Paris Attacks?

This image posted on a pro-Isis Twitter account depicts members of the group holding the distinctive banners. BBC

Graeme Wood, Politico: ISIL: Who’s calling the shots?

Read the Islamic State’s propaganda and you wonder if the followers might be getting ahead of their caliph.

At last count, France had contributed thousands of foreign fighters to the civil war in Syria, the vast majority as foot soldiers of the Islamic State. These include countless young miscreants from the Parisian suburbs but also oddball elderly types, such as a red-bearded man named Abu Suhayb al Faransi, who starred in a propaganda video earlier this year. According to reports, the squad of assassins in Friday’s mayhem numbered only eight. One is bound to wonder, then: if the Islamic State required so few people to cause so much harm, then why hasn’t it perpetrated many other massacres already?

Islamic State channels pushed out official statements Saturday praising the attacks. Many have read this message, which gloated and moralized and promised a torrent of future attacks, as a claim of credit. The assassins are described as “a group of believers from the soldiers of the Caliphate,” and the message notes that the Islamic State is pleased with them (“They were truthful with Allah — we consider them so”).

WNU Editor: The leadership of the Islamic State have shown incredible resilience against everyone .... in short .... they know how to survive. They have mastered the use of terror to cement their rule over local populations, and they profit enormously from it. Would they be willing to risk it all by really antagonizing the West (and everyone else) with terror attacks on Western soil .... that is the million dollar question. My gut is telling me that most of them do not want to repeat the same mistake that Osama Bin Laden did with 9/11 .... but as to their followers .... who knows.