The Heritage Foundation reports that in 2015, the nation was besieged by the most terror attacks and plots since Sept. 11, 2001, when Osama bin Laden masterminded the downing of the Twin Towers in New York City.
Some 13 Islamist-inspired attacks and plots documented last year were more than the previous three years combined, Riley Walters, a researcher for the conservative Washington, D.C.-based think-tank's Allison Center for Foreign Policy.
Walters said there have been 76 terrorist attacks or plots since 9/11, with the Islamic State (ISIS) continuing to be successful in influencing disturbed young Americans.
"The majority of attacks or plots in 2015 were attributed to individuals who were at least partially inspired by ISIS," Walters writes in an article published at heritage.org.
And he adds that 2016 is "off to a bad start with the separate terror-related indictments of two Iraqi refugees last Thursday. That's the same day, a man pledging allegiance to ISIS, attempted to execute a police officer in Philadelphia."
Republican lawmakers told The Heritage Foundation the two refugee arrests should compel President Barack Obama to "rethink" his plan to greenlight 10,000 Syrian refugees for admittance into the United States this year.
"The president's top aides had held up the Iraqi program as proof that they could properly screen out would-be terrorists from the refugee population, and Mr. Obama had mocked Republicans for fearing 'widows and orphans,'" Walters writes.
"Yet one of the Iraqi refugees, Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, was admitted to the U.S. as a refugee while he was still a minor — a fact that Republicans said proved children could be just as dangerous when radicalized."
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