Americans are deeply worried that the a “catastrophic terrorist attack” by Islamic militants, like the one Wednesday on a Paris magazine staff, will happen in the United States, according to a new poll.
According to the survey from national pollster McLaughlin & Associates, 74.2 percent of likely voters said they fear terrorists affiliated with the Islamic State will strike U.S. targets if they aren’t stopped. The poll was provided to Secrets.
Worse, they believe the terrorists will use chemical or biological weapons, not just the guns used in Paris on the staff of the humor magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published cartoons the extremists didn’t like.
The poll was commissioned by author Joel C. Rosenberg, the New York Times bestselling author of the new terror thriller, “The Third Target.”
He told Secrets today: “The Paris attack is a horrible reminder that we can’t get complacent about radical Islam generally or ISIS specifically.”
As with past books, Rosenberg’s newest about the Islamic State threat is partly built on interviews he conducted with former CIA directors, a leader of Israel’s Mossad, and Middle Eastern rulers including the prime minister of Jordan.
“My original plan was to write a novel that would warn people that ISIS was going to become a serious threat to the U.S., Israel and our Arab allies over the next five years or so. But events have moved much faster that I realized. When I started, President Obama was calling ISIS a ‘JV’ team. Now they are creating genocidal conditions in Syria and Iraq,” he told Secrets.
In the poll, Americans also said that they are worried about an ISIS attack on Israel. Just over 72 percent said they expect an attack there if ISIS isn’t stopped. Below is the poll:
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
