The Threat of Domestic Terrorist attacks

H

Hard Ball

New member
My wife found this on another forum she frequents and showed it to me-

"A federal commisson which has been studying the threat of terrorist attacks here in the United States has issued its report which is very sobering. It concluded that terrorist attacks using conventional, nuclear, chemical. or biological weapos against our major cities is highly probable in the next few years.
They also concluded that the US is poorly prepared to respond to these attacks primarily because the resources to respond are fragmented and divided between federal, state and local authorities. They recommend creating a cabinet level organization responsible for "Homeland National Security."
Many existing federal organizations such as the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard would be transferred to the new federal agency.
Is this a good idea or a bad one?"

I agre that this is mighty sobering. It looks like we had better stop fooling around and get ready.
 
I agree that such an attack is likely in the future, considering how cheap, easy and effective it would be to release anthrax or botulism or some other nasty in some large city, say, at the airport and a couple of mass transit stations. But the conspiracy theorist in me can't shake the thought the gubmint is putting the worst possible spin on it in order to justify further degradation of personal freedom.
 
Do I expect such an 'attack"? Certainly. Do I really think its source willb e from anywhere except our own fearless "Leaders" as a device of manipulation to further erode individual freedoms? Nope. And lumping everything together in one more centralized federal bureaucracy is merely one facet of the overall manipulation.

We need to get ready, certainly, but not for outside invaders. Yeah, my paranoia is showing but I remember something about a saying "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't all out to get you..."
 
HardBall,

There have been a load of federal groups looking at this issue area for a number of years. Disparate examples include: the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, the USMC's studies underlying the formation of the Chemical-Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF), Dep. Sec. Def. John Hamre's 1996 Reform Initiative Directive #25 for integration of the National Guard and Reserve component into domestic WMD terrorism response - the list goes on and on.

One of the more interesting, if only because it has raised so few eyebrows, is the establishment (sometime in 2000 I think) of the standing Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-Civil Support) inside US Joint Forces Command. The JTF-Civil Support represents the cementing of a previously ad hoc relationship bringing military capabilities to bear in support of civilian government efforts. It is an embodiment of the coordination of effort and sharing of resources across multiple agencies which is required to seriously address concerns over our domestic vulnerabilities to terrorism. Initially headed by an Army National Guard one star (from the Vermont ANG), the JTF-Civil Support made a number of people VERY nervous. The idea that the military's capabilities would be made regularly available to the civilian government seemed a spooky concept and seemed to fly in the face of posse comitatus' (18 U.S.C. § 1385 (1994)) prohibitions against the use of the armed forces in law enforcement.

I had the pleasure of sitting in on a small group conversation with this particular general officer and found him to be highly sensitive to the slippery slope issues surrounding his mission. Still, I'm not sure I like the idea of his job even existing.

The greater point is that, if you want to really get serious about countering domestic terrorism, you are going to have to skirt some very fine lines between necessary effectiveness and the kind of legal environment most Americans would find unacceptable.

My $0.02 for what it's worth.
 
It would be rather easy to effectively deploy a biological attack on the United States, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. One just needs the money & desire to do so... The conseqences of carrying out an attack like this would be VERY swift and brutal I would tend to imagine!

Oh yeah by the way any attack carried out in Northern NJ/NYC, would be entirely ineffective as that area has already been exposed to biological/chemical agents for some time now.... ;)

Oh yeah I forgot there has ALREADY been a Biological attack on a major US city, carried out by.... you guessed it, the US Government in Cali. I will have to do some research into the details, but I know people died in the "attack".
 
We already have an national organization to deal with terrorism. It's called the "militia".

If training and the necessary equipment were not looked upon as the devil incarnate, I believe that we could be ready for such things without creating another BATF or FBI.
 
G.Gordon Liddy wrote a very interesting one page paper a few yrs ago.I have lost the copy I had but I remember a lot of it.The use of 200 men to bring this country to its knees.Part with high powered rifles and AP ammo to hit the main electrical distrabution centers.It seem there are only a few main ones and the transformers are made overseas with a 6 month wait.The rest would use explosives and incendaries to blow up the main gas pump stations and natural gas pump systems.I didn't do any research on it but it sure looked like it would work.200 men are not a lot and equipment needed are not that hard to come by.
 
beemerb,

Even one person could do that with one computer. There was a group of hackers, that hacked their way into the National Power grid, and telephone systems. (They even got the Presidents personal numbers)

That group could have shut down vast area's of the power grid very easily :)

Again I will have to do some research do get the details on this. :(
 
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