http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/?hp=Obama: 'Serious threat' to the U.S. from trained terrorists
By BURGESS EVERETT |
6/29/14 10:19 AM EDT
The United States has been “under serious threat” during President Barack Obama’s entire presidency from terrorists, according to the president himself.
In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the president highlighted the growing fears that those trained in Middle East terrorist cells can back to Europe or the United States to execute an attack.
“They’re gaining strength in some places. We’ve seen Europeans who are sympathetic to [the terrorist] cause traveling into Syria, and now may travel into Iraq, getting battle hardened. Then they come back, they have European passports, they don't need a visa to get into the United States,” Obama said on “This Week.” “We’re spending a lot of time and we have been for years making sure that we are improving intelligence so we can respond to that.”
Obama added that the United States needs to continue to improve intelligence and reconnaisance to sniff out threats; and he is isn't ruling out doing even more.
"There are going to be times where we take strikes against the organizations that can do us harm," Obama said.
Hawkish Republican Rep. Pete King of New York said Obama should do even more and pressed the president to be “really aggressive” in combatting terrorists trained overseas.
“Any of these people can come back to United States and carry out the type of attack that they’ve been trained on in Syria,” King said.
