Sen. Lindsey Graham warned on Friday that Islamic jihadists are using such attacks as those in France this week as practice for widespread assaults in the United States.
"There are more terrorists, more organizations, with more weapons, more safe havens, with more capabilities than there were before 9/11 to strike our homeland," the South Carolina Republican told
Greta Van Susteren on her Fox News program.
"In a perverse kind of way, there's a jihadi Olympic contest between these groups, and the gold medal will go to the one that can hit us here in America."
Three terrorists were killed and one remained at large late Friday in two attacks in Paris that killed a total of 16 people.
Twelve died in a shooting rampage at the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, and four people — including three hostages — were killed when police stormed a kosher grocery on Friday.
A 26-year-old woman was involved in the grocery store attack, authorities said.
A member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said the group directed the Charlie Hebdo attack "as revenge for the honor" of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, who has been satirized in the magazine.
If that is confirmed by intelligence officials, the attack would be the first time AQAP, which works from Yemen, has successfully carried out an operation in the West after at least two earlier attempts.
Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said terrorists "really want to come here into our FBI, the CIA, the NSA."
These groups "would rather hit us here than anywhere," he added. "They've got a lot of foreign fighters who have gone to Syria and Iraq, and different organizations are trying to come here."
Noting AQAP's stronghold in Yemen, Graham said that 68 of the 132 detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba come from that country.
"The Obama administration seems to be hell-bent on letting people out of Guantanamo Bay at a time when it really is dangerous," the senator said.
Graham said that New Hampshire GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who also sits on the panel, has proposed legislation to halt releases from the prison of those who are classified as medium- and high-security threats.
"What you see happening in Europe is going to come here soon if we don't take the fight to these guys," he told Van Susteren.
Graham charged that President Barack Obama's efforts to battle Syria, Iraq and the Islamic State (ISIS) are "not to degrade and destroy, but really to contain."
"This phased approach is really political doublespeak for 'I'm going to contain this problem until I get out of office,' " he said. "If he allows these guys a safe haven for three more years because he doesn’t want to take them on with ground components, the likelihood of us getting attacked goes up exponentially."
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