Graham: ISIL 'not the JV team anymore'

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant directly threatens the U.S. homeland, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday, and hundreds of members of the terrorist group with U.S. and European passports could use them to try to carry out attacks on America.

"It's about time now to assume the worst about these guys rather than underestimating them — they're not the JV team anymore," the South Carolina Republican said on CNN's "State of the Union." "They're the most prominent terrorist organization in the world, but they're not the only one. They're in competition with the other jihadist groups, and the gold medal will be awarded to the group that can hit America."

The well-funded terror group responsible for the death of journalist James Foley in Iraq last week — characterized by the White House as a terrorist attack on America — has ambitions to strike the United States, Graham added.

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"I hope the new mission is to defeat and destroy ISIL as a threat to the homeland," he said.

But Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, wasn't as quick to characterize ISIL as an immediate threat to the U.S.

“We have to begin with the presumption that they could be such a threat. … But to jump from what they’ve done, which is horrific, the murder of Mr. Foley, to the assumption that they’re going to be an immediate and, within days, threat to us here in our homeland, I think you don’t jump to that assumption, but you don’t dismiss it," he said. "You carefully look at what they’re doing, what they want to do.”