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In the Age of Terror, vigilance is a civic duty Date published: 11/29/2009
We are not done yet. --Ramsey Yousef, when told by an FBI agent that the World Trade Center, which Yousef had bombed Feb. 26, 1993, was still standing (quoted in the book "Our Own Worst Enemy," by USAF Col. (Ret.) Randall Larsen). COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. --Non-metropolitan America, including Fredericksburg, was frightened and sad when the attacks of 9/11 brought horrific death and destruction to New York City and the Pentagon, inside the Washington Beltway. Yet Americans who lived far from big cities could comfort themselves with a soft and fuzzy blanket of an idea.The idea was that mass-murdering terrorists probably thought their communities simply too small to molest. Al-Qaida, whose basic war-fighting doctrine is macabrely captured by the title of an Edgar Rice Burroughs story--"More Fun! More People Killed!"--and its knockoffs later certified their fondness for big-city, high-profile targets by bombing Madrid and London. Smallville. Grover's Corner. Podunk. The real-world counterparts of such American places--you live in one--seem relatively safe from the globe's masters of evil. Stay away from the big cities--how many of us thought and advised this just after 9/11?--and you should be OK. But Paul Bremer, the former U.S. administrator to Iraq and one of the presenters at a national-security conference here earlier this month, thinks that almost no American is beyond danger. Starting in the late 1980s, Mr. Bremer served in several elite anti-terrorist posts, including federal coordinator for counterterrorism. A report he helped write before Sept. 11, 2001, outlined one plausible scenario of a terrorist attack: in 10 or 12 widely separated suburban malls, with conventional explosives, simultaneously, on Black Friday--the bustling shopping day in which many of us took part two days ago. Although the casualties of such an attack might fall below the 9/11 mark, its economic impact, said Ambassador Bremer, could surpass that awful day, as a whole nation shied indefinitely from normal commercial activity. Moreover, the attacks, if conducted by a highly trained network of operatives, would be almost undetectable until too late. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons--the classic WMD--are complicated to make and move internationally. Not so, conventional bombs, which al-Qaida's manuals instruct its killers to assemble inside targeted countries. Yousef nearly took down at least one of the Twin Towers with a homemade bomb, whose ingredients cost under $400.
Randall Larson and Paul Bremer and the entire industry that has grown around generating fear around the "possible." True professionals that actually operate in the areas of CT and National Security know that you can conjure up boogeymen anywhere you look if that is what you are looking for -- if there is a vested interest in doing so. The Cheney doctrine is to promote and maintain high paranoia that threats are everywhere, so you'd better give up you rights or we can't protect you.
bullet-drop-compensated/parallax-corrected optics with illuminated reticles: "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." - Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto Well, the AJaps did successfully invade Kiska and Attu. Sheik and his buddies would already be in the Aleutians if I had my way. Hey, Attu would be a great place to relocate GITMO>>> haha.
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