By BRIAN BAKST
Associated Press
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Friday the mass killing in California was heightening the need for intelligence sharing and military strikes in places where extreme elements have taken hold.
The former Secretary of State said in Iowa that the massacre that left 14 dead and many more injured in San Bernardino, California, showed the U.S. must step up its vigilance against global threats. She said the fight must occur online given the sophisticated use of the Internet by extremist groups.
Clinton spoke shortly before the FBI announced it was officially investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism. She said, "We’re learning more by the hour. There certainly is much more support for the view this was a terrorist act."
She said the nation needs to be vigilant and cooperative, "collecting and analyzing information," and urged the government to "redouble our efforts to dismantle the structure of global terrorism."
Clinton was campaigning in Iowa, the home of the nation’s leadoff presidential caucuses, where she plugged a new plan to rebuild the nation’s aging transportation system. It would aim to spend $275 billion to fix crumbling bridges, highways and airports, and would seek to create a national infrastructure bank that has been blocked by Republicans during President Barack Obama’s two terms.
She was joined by Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who became the third member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet to endorse Clinton. Perez praised Clinton as an advocate for workers, telling supporters, "Her north star is the middle class."
Orange-shirted laborers from a union out of Des Moines dotted the crowd as well as local carpenters and people from other unions. The audience wasn’t entirely union workers, though, and aides collected get-out-the-vote information from people as they walked into the training center.
David Parker, a carpenter’s union member from Sioux City who does caulking and panel work on commercial job sites, wore a Clinton T-shirt but said he still needs isn’t fully sold on her candidacy.
"She says she’s for labor and labor-friendly and wants to spend all this money on infrastructure and stuff," he said. "We’ve endorsed others before and they’ll promise you this and that and give you nothing. We’ve been burnt so many times. I’ve got t-shirts from other campaigns that are in a dresser drawer. You throw them over the top of something else when you want to go do something nasty."
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Associated Press writer Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.
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