A new report by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations has some advice for the United States on the subject of terrorism: Get used to it.
A task force headed by former Sen. Gary Hart asserted that the United
States remains unprepared to stop a major terrorist attack and
urged Washington to tap the expertise of its allies in Europe and the Middle
East.
"The United States does not have a monopoly on insight and ingenuity. It should
be keen to learn from others' experience by sending research teams abroad to
identify the best practices that could be implemented quickly here in the
United States."
The report said the United States must appeal to its allies for help in preparing for
any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attack and urged the Bush administration to
send government teams to Europe and the Middle East for training, Middle East Newsline reported.
"While terrorism may be a new and painful experience for most Americans,
regrettably many American allies such as Britain, France, Spain, and Israel
have been confronted by this challenge for some time," the report said.
The Council on Foreign Relations said Al Qaida and its satellite groups might avoid striking
Persian Gulf oil facilities and instead target unprotected U.S. energy
infrastructure.
The report said Iraq could exploit U.S. vulnerabilities and launch an attack that will even
exceed the Al Qaida suicide missions in New York and Washington on Sept. 11,
2001.
"An adversary intent on disrupting America's reliance on energy need not
target oil fields in the Middle East," the report said. "The infrastructure
for providing energy to end users is concentrated, sophisticated, and
largely unprotected. Sixty percent of the Northeast's refined oil products
are piped from refineries in Texas and Louisiana."
The report said the United States has not trained enough personnel to
respond to a weapons of mass destruction attack. The challenge of a
biological attack is detection while that of a chemical attack is
determining which antidotes to administer.
The panel established by the council included two former chairmen of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former director of the CIA and FBI. The report
said the 650,000 local and state police officials in the United States
continue to operate in a virtual intelligence vacuum. This includes a lack
of access to terrorist watch lists provided by the State Department to
immigration and consular officials.
