Threat of ISIS beheading in Australia prompts massive police raids

It sounds like a 24 episode, and come to think of it, they haven't done a season in Australia yet. (Granted, they've got to get Jack out of Russia first but let's not get ahead of ourselves.) This is 100 percent real, though. The Australian government received intelligence that ISIS monsters operating in Australia were planning to snatch a random person on the street, take them to a secret location and behead them - all on video, of course - with the black ISIS flag in the background.

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In response, the Aussies acted on the intelligence and conducted massive police raids - involving as many as 800 cops - and arrested 15 people believed to be involved in the plot. One suspect has been identified as 22-year-old Omarjan Azari of Sydney. He's been charged with conspiracy to commit a terrorist act:

Australia is concerned over the number of its citizens believed to be fighting overseas with militant groups, including a suicide bomber who killed three people in Baghdad in July and two men shown in images on social media holding the severed heads of Syrian soldiers. More than 800 police were involved in the pre-dawn security operation in Sydney and Brisbane, which was described as the largest in Australian history and resulted in the detention of 15 people, police said. Abbott told a news conference that members of the radical group had planned to conduct a public beheading. "That's the intelligence we received," he said. Media reported that the plans included snatching a person at random in Sydney, Australia's largest city, and executing them on camera draped in the group's black flag.

The evidence the government presents in this case will tell us a lot about how real the threat might be of ISIS perpetrating attacks like this in places like Australia and, of course, the U.S. The left is already mocking the notion that ISIS will soon be coming to your local shopping malls, trying to turn it into the latest silly right-wing paranoid fantasy. ISIS is under your bed! Bahahahahahahahaha! But the evidence will show what it shows. Is it really that hard to conceive of the most radicalized Muslims in a western nation being conscripted to commit acts of shocking violence and evil? (I suppose this is the point where you bring up 9/11 as an example of it already having happened, and the left screaming that you're not allowed to bring up or "politicize" 9/11.) But one thing I recall about 9/11 is that no one thought such an event was plausible until we sat there and watched it unfold, after which the nation's sense of what was possible changed - permanently, we thought, but over time it's pretty clear we returned to the 9/10 mindset that regarded such notions as the paranoid fantasies of right-wing nut jobs. I think ISIS still appears to most people as a far-away force threatening a nation we kind of sort of have an interest in - horrific and monstrous to be sure, but not a concern for your town or your neighborhood. But is that reality? Or will we merely cling to that notion until what we see with our own eyes no longer permits it? The intelligence gathered by the Australian government says ISIS is willing to grab and behead anyone, anywhere. None of us know yet how substantial their information is, but if it's sound, do you seriously think they'd be doing this in Australia and not in the United States?