Until we were blue in the face and bloodied from banging our heads against a wall

The Blaze:

Al Qaeda in the Heartland: Alarming FBI Video Shows What Many Have Been Warning About for Years

Dozens of suspected terrorist bombmakers, some of which reportedly targeted American troops, may have been inadvertently permitted entry into the United States as war refugees, according to a bombshell report from ABC News.

ABC also obtained exclusive video of an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist, who was resettled in Kentucky as an Iraq “war refugee” after he allegedly killed American soldiers, handling heavy weapons in a storage locker in America’s heartland. The FBI believes the weapons were to be sent back to insurgents in Iraq.

Image source: ABC News

Suspected terrorist Waad Ramadan Alwan can be seen in FBI video “expertly field stripping what the FBI identified as a Russian PKM machine gun,” the report said. Federal agents reportedly surveilled Alwan for a period of time and were able to identify one of his accomplices, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, who is seen in the footage handling a Stinger missile launcher and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

During an FBI sting operation, Alwan reportedly bragged to an undercover informant that he killed American soldiers in Iraq. FBI Louisville supervisory special agent Tim Beam said the terrorist claimed he had the soldiers for “lunch and dinner.”

Due to a seriously flawed U.S. refugee screening system, Alwan and Hammadi were resettled in Bowling Green, Ky., even though both were detained by Iraqi authorities during the war, federal prosecutors revealed.

In addition to sending weapons back to radical extremists in Iraq, Alwan revealed terrorists wanted to target a specific American soldier in the United States and also attack other targets on American soil.

“The weapons seen in the video, however, were supplied by the FBI after being rendered inoperable. Alwan and Hammadi were arrested in 2011 and later pleaded guilty to terror-related crimes,” ABC News reported.

“We are currently supporting dozens of current counter-terrorism investigations like that,” said FBI Agent Gregory Carl, director of the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, known as TEDAC.

Following the Kentucky case, the State Department halted Iraq refugee applications for six months in 2011, according to federal officials. Less than 10,000 Iraqis were reportedly given refugee status in the U.S. in 2011, about half the number from 2010.

Bowling Green Police Chief Doug Hawkins, whose department assisted with the FBI’s investigation, asked what every American is surely asking right now: “How do you have somebody that we now know was a known actor in terrorism overseas, how does that person get into the United States? How do they get into our community?”

To read ABC News’ full exclusive report, click here.