| Font Size |
Ken Wainstein told a Washington think tank that the Mumbai attacks in November showed the effectiveness of a low-technology coordinated assault on an open city.
"You can envision that happening in any American city, and it's chilling when you think about it," Wainstein told policy makers and others in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That's the kind of thing that is all too realistic anywhere in the world."
Wainstein's comments reflected a growing unease among international security officials that the Mumbai attacks may have established a new model for terrorism.
He spoke a day before government and local officials were to testify to Congress on the Mumbai attacks. The Senate Homeland Security Committee on Thursday will consider the response by Indian officials, and what is needed to prevent such an attack in the United States.
"We're going to go through where they screwed up, and how do we fix it – how do we make sure we don't make the same mistakes?" committee spokesman Seamus Hughes said.
The 10 attackers, who Indian authorities say came from Pakistan, came ashore from speedboats and fanned out to locations such as hotels, taking and executing hostages and holding off security forces for days. They were armed with automatic rifles and grenades and carried global positioning equipment.
MUMBAI ATTACKS
The attackers had broad international contacts, Britain's spy chief, MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans, said in newspaper interviews published on Wednesday.
"We have looked at individuals' communications, where they have been and so on and found they have got connections with most countries including the UK, but not of national security significance," London's Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying.
Wainstein declined to discuss whether there was any sign the attackers communicated with people in the United States.
The attacks in Mumbai may spark more such raids by militants now that defenses are improving against suicide car-bomb attacks, Dell Dailey, the US State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, said on Tuesday.
"This might open the door of awareness," he told reporters, as Evans made similar comments in London. "The spectacularness of an on-foot attack will unfortunately ring true to other terrorist organizations," Dailey said.
Wainstein said early lessons from Mumbai underscored a need for facilities such as hotels to be told of intelligence on potential threats, and to take them seriously. He said the public also must be made aware of such threats.
Discuss this story on expressindia forums
|
|
As per the FREEMASON SOCIETY where all the Wes leaders are members and have to take an oath at the temple at Bohimian Way in CA. There rethoric is the same in the same tune and abide by the FM regulation. If you have to rule the word then to do ONLY TWO THINGS (1) keep the people in debt (2) create terror. Therefore common people have no time in keeping the account how to run their house hold and always fear. So Bush has followed the same rule and all others would do the same. Is there anything new in what he has said NOW? Absolutely nothing.
This seems to be propaganda of communal forces of India that Shri Hemant Karkare had bravely and secularly discovered to exist in India by using Narco test of laptops of Sadhvi and Purohit. Because, US is secular Xtian Pakistan is secular Muxlim. Secular will never attack another secular. In India it was a minor accident as Congress and uPA and Communists said, carried out by misguided youth who do not have reservation in jobs.
My govt is spineless made up of sonia and womanmohan singh. We cannot even attack Pakistan, the terrorist nataion all bent upon doing islamic Jehad.
if something less than mumbai also happens in US, let me tell you, US will do something greater than Isreal...aur hum...mera bharat mahan