U.K. raises terrorist threat level

◼ The U.K. in response to a threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria raised its terrorist attack warning system to the second highest level Friday from substantial to severe, which carries the warning that a terrorist attack is "highly likely."

The U.S. National Terrorism Advisory System’s website shows no current threat, the lowest level. The system has three threat levels: none; elevated, which means a credible terrorist threat; and imminent, which means a credible, specific and impending threat.

◼ America has no strategy, but ISIS does: Biological terrorism - Noah Rothman/HotAir

The nature of the threat the Islamic State poses to the West is a subject of much debate. Some indicate that the group is planning to execute attacks in the West at its nearest opportunity, while others say that the organization has designs only on capturing and holding territory in its neighborhood – and that’s a range of confused opinions coming from former and current administration officials.

While there is a robust debate over whether ISIS is planning to execute terrorist attacks against Western targets, there should be no debate that the origination is actively seeking the capability to carry out terror strikes.

According to a report in Foreign Policy magazine on Thursday, investigators recently had an opportunity to inspect a Dell laptop allegedly linked to ISIS which was transported to Turkey from Syria. In that laptop, which belonged to a man who studied chemistry and physics at two Tunisian universities, contained files with instructions on how to manufacture weaponized bacterial agents.