White House BS on Venezuelan troop movement

This is the stuff that used to drive me insane. From today’s White House press gaggle:

Q Venezuela is saying today that it’s deploying tank battalions and air and sea forces toward the Colombian border and its crisis there. What’s the level of U.S. concern on that? And is there any chance that the U.S. would be offering military assistance to it’s ally, Colombia?

MS. PERINO: I think that’s a little bit premature. I don’t — we do not have independent confirmation of that claim of the troop movements down in that area. So I’m not able to say. I think it’s premature to say that there would be any need for military help. We do believe that Colombia and Ecuador should be able to work this out between themselves. We don’t see any need for a country that wasn’t involved to be a part of it. We do think it’s curious that a country such as Venezuela would be raising the specter of military action against a country who was defending itself against terrorism. I think that says a lot about Venezuela. White House

To review: Venezuela mobilizes its troops and moves them to the border of Colombia, a US ally, yet the White House says “we don’t know what’s going on.”

Spies, satellites, etc not working, I take it? How else can it happen that such an obvious intelligence failure can occur?

Or could it just be Perino was feeding bullshit to the mainstream press to avoid having to give a substantial comment, yet the press still has no idea when and how question should be asked?

It’s probably the latter. Again.