Word: marriott
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...attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad should tell us a couple of things: For a start, no one and nothing is safe from a car bomb. Or, as in the Marriott's case, a truck bomb. As hotels go, the Marriott was a fortress. It had fairly good "standoff" - the distance between it and the street; luggage and guests were X-rayed before entering; the hotel was located in one of the best policed capitals in the world. The only thing that could have been done to make the Marriott even safer was to have completely shut down Islamabad...
...Pakistan's new president Asif Zardari was supposed to have been dining at the Marriott when the bomb went off, but had decided at the last minute to eat at the prime minister's house. Had he kept to his original dinner plans, he could very well have been killed, pushing Pakistan closer to total and uncontainable chaos. By the way, there is a fairly good argument that car bombs are what keep the world's leaders from getting out and walking around, leaving them physically isolated...
...Director Michael Hayden said that al Qaeda's obtaining a nuclear weapon is the CIA's deepest fear. While he was right in the sense that bin Laden potentially could again kill thousands of Americans, it's a worst case terrorist scenario and not the most likely one. The Marriott bombing reminded us once again that it is the common, everyday weapon we should be most afraid of. The 9/11 hijackers took over four airplanes with box cutters...
...doubt al-Qaeda will be blamed for the Marriott attack, with the implication that only an experienced terrorist group could have carried it out. But just about anyone can make a car bomb. Designs are available are on the Internet. Karl Armstrong, the man who blew up a University of Wisconsin building in 1970, found the formula for his fertilizer car bomb in the Encyclopedia Britannica...
...Whatever the fall out is from the Marriott bombing, it may be a nuclear bomb in the hands of terrorists that keeps the CIA awake at night, but it should be that eighteen-wheeler truck that doesn't look any different from all the others...