This has been going on for some time now, but it always gets overlooked by Pravda.
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/ ... o-us.html/Gov. Rick Perry speaks with journalists after a lunch meeting with business people in Portsmouth, N.H., on Aug. 22, 2014.
updated at 12:40 to reflect Mexican official’s comments and Perry’s fresh comments in New Hampshire and at 2:45 with quote from Perry aide Felix Browne
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. –On Thursday, Gov. Rick Perry issued a pretty alarming warning. Terrorists from the Islamic State — one of the nastiest, most brutal terror groups ever — could be sneaking into Texas across the Southwest border at any time, thanks to the Obama administration’s failures in Iraq and in securing the border.
This morning, the Pentagon press secretary, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, said there’s just no evidence of that — though it’s something to keep an eye on.
“I’ve seen no indication that they are coming across the border with Mexico. We have no information that leads us to believe that. That said, we do know they have aspirations to hit western targets and it’s something, as [Defense] Secretary Hagel said yesterday, that we’ve got to take seriously and with have to try to be ready for it,” Kirby said today on CNN.
Mexican officials are unhappy about Perry’s comments. They were eager to flag Kirby’s response, and this afternoon they issued their own stern rejection of the governor’s warnings.
“Mexican authorities have no record of the presence of Islamist extremist groups or individuals in Mexico,” said Ariel Moutsatsos, minister for public affairs at the embassy in Washington. “We take all possible measures to impede any terrorist activity in our territory.”
Noting that U.S. and Mexican officials share information constantly, he added, “There is no indication that would even suggest what Governor Perry has claimed. The U.S. State Department, in its most recent report on terrorism in the world, dismissed the idea that any international terrorist groups were operating in Mexico, and in recent hours the Pentagon also publicly denied having any indication leading them to believe that terrorists are crossing into the United States from Mexico.
In Portsmouth — the first of six public stops Perry will make on a two-day visit to the presidential testing ground of New Hampshire — the governor stood by his warning.
“ISIS has said they’re coming to America and they are going to attack us. I take them at their word,” he said, noting repeatedly that the U.S.-Mexico border is “porous” and therefore a potential entry point for bad guys. “I agree that there is no hard evidence. My point is do we need to wait until there’s an attack on America before we secure the border?”
Perry spoke to about 40 local bankers and other business people. In a scrum afterward with journalists he noted that three Ukrainians were caught in West Texas within the last 60 days, demonstrating the danger.
“It is a real possibility. That border is not secure,” he said.
Perry told the group that he spoke Thursday with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about border issues. But he ignored a reporter’s question later about whether they discussed the possibility of ISIS-trained jihadists crossing the border.
Perry spokesman Felix Browne said later by email that “ISIS is a brutal terrorist organization that the Secretary of Defense has said is `beyond anything we’ve ever seen,’ and they have been very clear about their intent to inflict harm on Americans ‘in any place.’
“The fact remains that as long as our border is unsecured we do not know who is coming across it. As the governor said, this is a potential threat we would be unwise to discount,” Browne said.
On Thursday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that ISIS poses an “immediate threat” because some some of its fighters hold passports from the U.S. and other Western nations and could therefore slip fairly easily into these countries.
