Could A Mumbai Style Terror Attack Happen Here
November 25, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Homeland Security News
If this is your first time visiting National Terror Alert you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. The National terror Alert feed features breaking news, alerts and bulletins on demand and it's free of charge..
You will only see this message on your first visit to the site. Thanks for visiting!
Are US cities prepared for a Mumbai-style terror attack? Gerald Posner watches a mock assault on Miami, and reveals the answer.
A year ago tomorrow, millions of people worldwide began watching a terror attack play out live for three days in Mumbai. Ten gunmen staving off the police, special forces, and army troops captured world attention while slaughtering 173 people and wounding more than 300.
As the Mumbai victims are remembered this week, federal terrorism intelligence experts have quietly embarked on a campaign to help some major metropolitan police forces in the U.S. learn the lessons of Mumbai. Two weeks ago, I was the first journalist allowed to sit in on a two-hour briefing conducted by John Miller, the assistant deputy director of intelligence analysis for the Office of Director of National Intelligence, to 200 top Miami police officers, SWAT team leaders, and leaders from the fire department. The briefing, conducted at the Miami Police Department’s headquarters, was a sobering PowerPoint presentation. Miami was the third city, after Los Angeles and Boston, to get Miller’s briefing.
In the exercise set up for Miami, a Mumbai-type attack meant the first shooting was along the business district in Coconut Grove. Less than 30 minutes later, a car bomb went off in crowded Little Havana.
“Mumbai signaled a turn in terror operations,” says Miller, the former co-anchor of ABC’s 20/20, best known for his 1998 cave interview of Osama bin Laden, who has worked with the government on the terror front since 2001. “With al Qaeda being hit hard, less centralized and having more trouble raising money, Mumbai is the format for the future: low tech, low cost and high yield. It was a strategic and technical success that got them the biggest bang for the buck, creating a lot of fear while getting great media attention.”
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=49c8d8de-16a3-4681-a4b4-5680d3c32e81)
The Los Angeles PD is currently training all its personnel for exactly this type of attack. It’s called Multi-Assault Counterterrorism Action Capabilities (MACTAC).
The Japanese in WWII were apprehensive about invading the US because they feared there would be “a gun behind every blade of grass.” Hopefully the portion of our population taking advantage of our second ammendment rights would act as an effective deterrent to anyone considering such an attack. Not that our enemies are afraid to die for their cause, but hopefully they fear being killed before they are able to wreak enough havok to make it “worth it.”
One statement in the article is particularly true. In situations like this, “negotiating skills are useless.” That is absolutely true. In most cases when Islamic terrorists take hostages it isn’t for ransom, only to manipulate more victims to come into their tangled web, or to use the hostages as shields until they can’t use them anymore then they blow themselves up. The Islamic Terrorists have promised us our very own “Beslan,” but I bet our country won’t respond like Russia did, when they suffered their attack. These Islamic Terrorists need to be exterminated like the vermin they are.