In Paris on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said there was "something different" about what happened at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January and the Friday attacks in Paris, which left 132 people dead and hundreds injured.
"I think everybody would feel that," he said. "There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of — not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they're really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn't to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people."
Militants with ties to an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen killed 12 people when they stormed the offices of the French satirical magazine, and al Qaeda said Charlie Hebdo was targeted because it mocked the Prophet Mohammed. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday's carnage, saying Paris is the "capital of prostitution and obscenity," Politico reports. During a campaign event Tuesday in South Carolina, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush read comments from Kerry, and said "there should be no empathy and there's no rationale for barbaric Islamic terrorists who want to destroy Western civilization."
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