Homeland Security policymakers have itemized some of the catastrophies that could happen in an effort to pinpoint where money should best be spent — and it isn’t pleasant reading…and raises the question again about whether the U.S. is focusing enough on “softer” targets.
Here’s a key part of the New York Times report:
The document, known simply as the National Planning Scenarios, reads more like a doomsday plan, offering estimates of the probable deaths and economic damage caused by each type of attack.
They include blowing up a chlorine tank, killing 17,500 people and injuring more than 100,000; spreading pneumonic plague in the bathrooms of an airport, sports arena and train station, killing 2,500 and sickening 8,000 worldwide; and infecting cattle with foot-and-mouth disease at several sites, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Specific locations are not named because the events could unfold in many major metropolitan or rural areas, the document says.
The agency’s objective is not to scare the public, officials said, and they have no credible intelligence that such attacks are planned. The department did not intend to release the document publicly, but a draft of it was inadvertently posted on a Hawaii state government Web site.
You sometimes wonder about the I.Q. of some folks. Why don’t we just call up Osama bin Laden and hand him our entire planning book?
This info shouldn’t have been on a website and seeing it in the New York Times isn’t reassuring, either. Granted, the Times notes that the idea behind this is so policy makers can determine how to most effectively distribute funding. But do we have to inform Al Qaeda of where what we’re scrutinizing and where we’re going to put the funds?
And then you get to the question of “soft targets.” As the Washington snipers pointed out, terror can be spread in smaller, well-targeted doses, too. Are there plans in place to keep an eye on schools and malls? If there are, rest assured you’ll see a detailed report on what they are on a website or in a newspaper….
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.