Word: madrid
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...Madrid joins the list of cities--including Moscow, Paris and Tokyo--whose subways and trains have been turned into scenes of carnage. For transportation-security officials in Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia, there will be many sleepless nights ahead. In New York City, with more than 4 million rail and subway commuters daily, security has become an obsession. Although city officials have stepped up police patrols and introduced closed-circuit cameras in stations, they believe they cannot frisk rail commuters in the way that federal authorities screen air travelers...
...security experts noted an inventive variation in the Madrid bombings. Rather than employing a large truck bomb, against which some defensive techniques work, the attackers used small charges in backpacks. Palestinian terrorists using satchels on Israeli buses have killed dozens of passengers. But in Madrid, the bombers caused some 200 deaths and more than 1,500 other casualties with just 10 bags. The terrorists achieved the effect of a large-scale attack with a hand-carried weapon that easily avoids detection...
...dirty little secret among security experts is that our society and economy are fragile. Shopping malls, casinos, theme parks and stadiums share a vulnerability to the sort of attacks seen in Madrid. In all these places, as with train stations, tens of thousands of people push through essentially unguarded portals in short periods of time. Since 9/11, owners of these facilities have feared that a few such attacks, indeed even just one, would keep customers away long enough to bring bankruptcy. The financial cost of adequately protecting the thousands of such venues, assuming that was feasible, would put a large...
Analysts call the calculations inherent in the Madrid attacks an "offense preference equation." Defense against such attacks is so disproportionately difficult that even setting up costly protection does not assure success. The attacker has the advantage. In such circumstances, security officials cannot just play defense. They must not wait to pick the terrorist out of the crowd at Grand Central Terminal in the minutes before he sets the timer. Terrorist cells must be infiltrated overseas. Terrorists have to be picked up at the border or found among the hundreds of millions of people on our streets...
TERROR IN MADRID Two hundred die in coordinated train bombings, and a videotaped message has al-Qaeda taking credit. Is a new wave of mayhem at hand...