Thomas Wictor

The Islamic State terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, were very poorly executed. In order to prove that, I’m going to talk about mass killings in a way that may sound coldblooded to you. I’ll understand if you find this post offensive. However, it’s important for you to know that the Paris terrorists had no real training.

This is the sort of irresponsible blather that I want to debunk.

“What is clear is that there was a very sophisticated level of preparation of training that took place prior to the attack,” said Charlie Winter, a London-based security analyst. “I can only speculate that it would be difficult to engage in training in explosives and shooting automatic weapons in France.”

Absolutely wrong. The French say that there were seven attackers, each armed with a military assault rifle and a suicide vest. Survivors from the Bataclan theater said that the terrorists also had hand grenades.

Here’s how many people were killed and where they died.

9:20 p.m. - A suicide bomber detonated at Stade de France, the national stadium in Saint-Denis, killing himself and a passerby.

9:25 p.m. - Terrorists in a car carried out a drive-by shooting with rifles at the bar Le Carillon and the restaurant Le Petit Cambodge, killing fifteen people.

9:30 p.m. - A suicide bomber detonated at Stade de France, killing only himself.

9:32 p.m. - Terrorists in a car carried out a drive-by shooting with rifles at Cafe Bonne Bière, killing five people.

9:36 p.m. - Terrorists in a car carried out a drive-by shooting with rifles at the restaurant La Belle Equipe, killing 19 people.

9:40 p.m - A suicide bomber detonated inside the Comptoir Voltaire restaurant, killing only himself.

9:40 p.m - Three men opened fire and threw hand grenades inside the Bataclan theater, killing eighty-nine people.

9:53 p.m. - A suicide bomber detonated at Stade de France, killing only himself.

12:00 a.m. - The police assaulted the Bataclan theater, killing one terrorist. The other two blew themselves up.

A total of 129 civilians and four police officers were killed.

Again, please understand: I’m only saying this next sentence in order to make a point.

For seven men armed with assault rifles, hand grenades, and suicide vests, the death toll is extremely low. On April 16, 2007, one insane bastard armed with two pistols killed 32 people and wounded seventeen others at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The Paris terrorists were armed with AK-47 variants. This is how fast a trained rifleman can fire such a weapon.

This is how fast a trained rifleman can change the magazines of such a weapon.

The Paris terrorists carried out three drive-by shootings with two rifles per car. It’s clear from the number of people killed that the terrorists had absolutely no training in marksmanship. And drive-by shootings of civilians make no sense whatsoever. A drive-by shooting is used when the shooter is in danger of being either shot at or captured. The Paris terrorists engaged in drive-by shootings because it’s part of their beloved Middle Eastern lore.

In the Bataclan theater, three terrorists with AK-47s and hand grenades killed eighty-nine people. This is what one hand grenade will do.

The Paris terrorists were not trained. They were given weapons and sent out to commit murder, but four of them killed only themselves with their suicide vests, and the others fired lots of bullets but didn’t hit as many people as they could’ve.

This is how powerful a single Islamic State suicide vest can be.

The bomber (red arrow).

And the explosion.

The media “experts” are cooing in admiration over the fact that the Islamic State launched suicide attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon on November 12, 2015. Well, the Islamic State sent four bombers. One was killed after his vest malfunctioned. This isn’t a particularly gruesome video, but it’s clear that the crowd administered some street justice in the form of massive blows to his body.

And a fourth bomber was captured alive after his vest malfunctioned.

In Lebanon the Islamic State had a 50 percent failure rate with their bombers, the same as in Paris.

The gore-free video below shows French forensic experts examining the suicide vest of the dead terrorist at the Comptoir Voltaire restaurant.

There’s almost no damage to the building. I won’t link to it, but you can find a video out there of an Islamic State suicide bomber in Yemen who accidentally detonated himself before arriving at his target. Only his head, arms, shoulders, and chest remain. However, the stars aligned all wrong for him, because he’s still alive, moving his hands and turning his head to gaze at the people photographing him. Karma has a very macabre sense of humor.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, al-Qaeda suicide bombers would often kill as many as 125 people with only one vest.

Although five of the Paris terrorists have not been identified, at least one was a career petty criminal, like Amedy Coulibaly, who murdered five people on January 8 and 9, 2015. He was confronted by French police special forces at the Hyper Cacher market. Coulibaly wore body armor and was armed with two AK-47s, but the police easily killed him, shooting his hands until they were useless and then filling his face with bullets.

Amedy Coulibaly was trained in one thing: how to die. French police special forces train constantly in marksmanship, which is why they were able to shoot Coulibaly in midair without catching each other in a crossfire.

The Islamic State poses a threat; there’s no doubt. However, what we don’t need is journalists and pundits raving about how well trained and sophisticated these terrorists are. They’re not. Defectors have said that they get about two weeks of military training, but half of that is indoctrination.

If you’re nervous, I want you to remember the Blue House Raid (January 17 to 29, 1968). Thirty-one North Korean commandos from Unit 124 trained for two years to carry out an assault on the Blue House, the official residence of the President of South Korea. During the final two weeks the commandos daily rehearsed attacking a full-scale mock-up of the building. The plan was to assassinate President Park Chung-hee; then the commandos would take over broadcasting networks and appeal to the North to invade and “liberate” the Southerners. North Korea would tell the world that it was asked to intervene.

On January 17, 1968, the commandos entered South Korea through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). They set up camp on Simbong Mountain, where they were discovered by four brothers cutting wood. Instead of killing the woodcutters, the commandos tried to indoctrinate them in communism. The woodcutters announced that they’d seen the light and were now communists, so the commandos let them go. Then the woodcutters went right to the police.

Forewarned, the Republic of Korea (ROK) armed forces made preparations, and the attempted raid of January 21 was a fiasco. All of the commandos except for two were killed in running gun battles that lasted until January 29. Twenty-six ROK troops and civilians, as well as four Americans, were also killed.

These assassins who’d trained for two years were as innocent as babies. Fanatics always fail. But there’s a happy ending.

One commando surrendered.

His name was Lieutenant Kim Shin-jo. He never used any of his weapons the entire time he was in South Korea, because he realized after he saw the cities that his superiors had lied to him about everything. South Korea wasn’t a hideous hellhole in which the people were enslaved. Therefore he couldn’t bring himself to fire on ROK soldiers. After a year of interrogations, Kim was given a pardon. He was free to begin a new life.

Today Kim is a Presbyterian minister.

He’s become something of a global folk hero, which he finds distasteful.

“It was not a good incident,” he says of his mission to assassinate the South Korean president. Though haunted by what he nearly did, and upset at the attention he gets, he overcomes his bouts of anger by reminding himself how lucky he is to have gotten a second chance. Personally, I think that the choice he made to not inflict harm resulted in the creation of the opportunities presented to him.

If a North Korean commando can become a Presbyterian minister who regrets his past, anything is possible. Never say never.