The White House was wrong to dismiss the government's own July 4 weekend terror warning as "standard operating procedure," former Homeland Security Sec. Tom Ridge said.
The comment, made by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, wasn't accurate,
Ridge said Monday on Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto."
"It's a real threat. I think it's a permanent threat," Ridge said. "I think this is a scourge with which we're going to have to deal with … for the foreseeable future."
Former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell also called on Americans to take the threat seriously.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we're sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States. That's how serious this is," Morell said on Monday.
Unless the United State takes a more aggressive stance against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), the July 4 warning made by the FBI, Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center "may ultimately become a standard warning, i.e. we're at risk all the time," Ridge said.
"Not to be breathless, but that is the reality of the new world as long as we let ISIL expand its reach beyond Syria and Iraq," he warned.
The warning comes amid what House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul on Sunday termed a
"confluence of events." In addition to the holiday honoring America's founding, ISIS celebrates its one-year anniversary of major territorial wins this week, and Internet traffic has seen ISIS calling for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, currently under way, to be changed from a month of peace to a month of calamities.
ISIS claimed credit for three terror attacks on Friday across three continents. Ridge said they likely were coordinated.
"This a global scourge and, frankly, until the White House, until this president, western allies and countries in that region, with the exception of Iran, get serious about destroying ISIL we're going to be living with this threat on a fairly regular basis," Ridge said.
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