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After Wednesday’s deadly shooting in France, which Islamic terrorists assaulted the satirical news magazine Charlie Hebdo killing 12 people including the publications outspoken editor, the nation is virtually under a siege mentality.

French officials are still trying to find the whereabouts of a 26 year old woman who reportedly is the wife of one of three Islamic terrorists killed in the confrontation with French military and security personnel.

The whereabouts of this woman is sketchy with reports having her in Turkey, and Turkish officials have informed the Associated Press she may be in Syria after crossing through the country and then vanishing near the Turkish-Syrian border.

The New York Times reported France remained on edge a day after security forces killed Mr. Coulibaly, who the police said was responsible for the deaths of four hostages at a kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris on Friday, and Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the brothers who fatally shot 12 people on Wednesday in and around the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper.

Intelligence officials are trying to find out the exact linkage between these individuals and terror organizations.  Reports have surfaced that one or both of the brothers traveled to Yemen and received training and financial support from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

In the New York Times report the precise nature of the relationships among the Kouachi brothers, Mr. Coulibaly, the Islamic State and another terrorist group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, remained murky. With security services still on high alert, there was little public indication of whether the authorities had specific information about possible further attacks or simply remained worried about the potential for other terrorists to take cues from the French gunmen and from the jihadists and militant groups that had quickly applauded them as heroes.

The Washington Post reported U.S. counterterrorism officials said they have spent the days since the attack on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo scouring databases maintained by the CIA and National Security Agency, among others, for clues to whether the Kouachis kept in communication with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) during what one official described as a “dark period” in a decade-long chronology.

Continued in the Post report U.S. officials said they are also seeking to determine whether the older Kouachi met with Awlaki in 2011. Officials said they see that as plausible because Awlaki was in charge of AQAP’s external operations and presumably would have been acutely interested in a recruit from Europe. But they have uncovered no evidence of such an encounter.

Awlaki was killed in a CIA drone strike shortly after Kouachi’s return to France, raising speculation that the cleric’s death may account for the brothers’ extended period of inactivity — that they shelved plans or cut off communications with AQAP as part of a broader effort to maintain a lower profile.

This attack in France has severely unnerved many in the United States, and criticism has come against the administration for downplaying the threat posed by Islamic terrorism.

The President badly mishandled the ISIS threat and the Middle East region is in turmoil, with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel even commenting the “world is exploding around us.”

The president has to articulate a strategy and he will have a chance in the coming weeks to lay out his strategy in confronting Islamic terror during his State of the Union address on January 20th.

This problem cannot be wished away or passed on to the next president it has to be dealt with now further delay will have severe consequence for the country.