Back in May, with ISIS ascendant, the Obama Pentagon ordered U.S. military bases here at home to raise their force protection condition status (FPCON) to "Bravo" amid a "general increase in the threat environment."
FPCON is the military's security posture to protect troops, their families, civilian employees, information, equipment and facilities against terrorist threats. FPCON Bravo -- the third-highest threat level on a five-tier scale used by the Department of Defense -- signals a climate in which "increased and more predictable threat[s] of terrorist activity" and "probable violence" exist, requiring higher security measures ranging from vehicle inspections, stricter ID checks and increased guard presence.
In September, with Syrian Muslim refugees flooding Europe and moving into areas near U.S. military bases and housing, the Army rightly raised alarms again about the threat such mass resettlement poses to our troops abroad.
"If it ends up being right next to where we have American bases or American housing areas, we're going to have to pay close attention to force protection," Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told the Army Times. "I worry about having thousands of young men sitting in tents all winter," he said, noting that they were "vulnerable to recruitment by extremist organizations."
The heightened security stance was enacted as Muslim refugee encampments in Germany became overrun by militant Islamic agitators, rapists, child abusers and sex traffickers.
Two months later, ISIS jihadists posing as refugees -- "refujihadis," as conservative podcasters Brett Smith and Lisa DePasquale pithily dubbed them -- committed mass murder of hundreds of civilians at soft targets across Paris.
Question: If these throngs of disgruntled, unemployed, border-traipsing Muslim refugees pose ongoing threats to our men and women in uniform and their families on bases stateside and overseas, what does that say about the vapid reassurances from President Obama, Democratic Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, and the refugee resettlement racketeers that our homeland security bureaucracy can effectively "vet" tens of thousands more and distribute them safely among our civilian population across the heartland?
I've reported for years on how immigration lawyers and tax-funded resettlement agencies run by left-wing religious and social justice groups have routinely game the system on behalf of asylum con artists. The racketeers coach applicants with phony stories and documents from "chop shops" and gamble their way through "refugee roulette."
Along with everyday fraudsters, numerous jihad operatives -- ranging from the Boston Marathon bomber brothers Tsarnaev to 1993 World Trade Center plotters Ramzi Yousef and the Blind Sheik to 1997 New York City bomb plotter Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer to CIA headquarters jihadist Mir Aimal Kansi to Ohio shopping mall bomb plotter Nuradin Abdi to ethnic Albanian Fort Dix jihad plotters Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka -- have exploited our fraud-riddled asylum and refugee programs to plot and wage war on Americans.
Reminder: FBI agents admitted in 2013 that several dozen suspected terrorist bomb-builders may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the United States as Iraqi war refugees, including two al-Qaida in Iraq jihadists who were resettled as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky -- and then later admitted in court that they had attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq, according to ABC News.
Reminder: In my adopted hometown of Colorado Springs, a gang of Iraqi Muslim refugees were convicted in the monstrous rape and brutalization of a woman in 2012 -- after being welcomed here with open arms and, in at least one case, receiving praise and help from U.S. soldiers.
While Obama officials now pay lip service to stringent "vetting," they unilaterally relaxed screening procedures last year to allow entry by untold asylees and refugees who confessed to providing "limited material support" to terror groups.
Partisan Attorney General Loretta Lynch smoothly assured us all this week that the administration that brought us Fast and Furious, the disastrous southern border surge, and Benghazi can guarantee "significant and robust screening."
But last month, FBI Director James Comey acknowledged on Capitol Hill that "gaps" remained in the U.S.'s ability to screen refugees from Syria. To those citing our ability to search numerous national security databases, Comey delivered this reality check:
"[I]f someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing showing up because we have no record of them."
Our government continues to issue one million green cards every single year, 70,000 permits to people who apply for asylum, 500,000 foreign student visas, and 700,000 work permits for both skilled and unskilled labor. Upwards of 30 million aliens are here illegally, with 45 percent of them visa overstayers from around the world, and hundreds of thousands of them deportation fugitives.
The Departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor have all proved themselves serially incapable of monitoring, collecting and analyzing basic data about who gets in. Decades' worth of U.S. Government Accountability Office and inspector general reports document repeated failures to enforce visa requirements and national security measures.
"Force protection" for American citizens on American soil starts with saying "stop" to a perilous new refugee flood -- so we can get our own house in order first.