Posted on 08/26/2006 6:31:06 PM PDT by SandRat
The federal government has mapped out a few places that could be targets for a major terrorist attack.
NORAD, in Colorado Springs, Colo., for one. The West Wing of the White House. Or another New York City landmark.
But the director of an organization that analyzes the country's level of disaster response offers up one more — Tucson's elementary schools.
In his new book "Americans at Risk," Irwin Redlener blasts what he calls a slow emergency response by the government to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and last year's Hurricane Katrina. He lists five worst-case scenarios to further illustrate this lack of preparedness and what can be done to improve it: a tornado near Springfield, Mo.; a nuclear detonation in Chicago; an earthquake in Seattle; a flu outbreak in New York City; and an attack on two elementary schools in Tucson.
What is it about our local schools that has Redlener, the director of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness, on alert? He points to the September 2004 terrorist takeover of an elementary school in Beslan, Russia.
"What we learned from the Beslan experience is that in this age of terrorism, there's no place that's invulnerable to the realities of modern terrorism," he said. "It's got a very long reach and looks to demoralize America as much as possible."
More specifically, he says he picked Tucson for its proximity to the Mexican border, which he says is too open, and the city's purported links to three of the conspirators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "I was just trying to make people aware of the fact this wasn't just a Northeast (United States) problem," Redlener said.
He used details, some of which have not been publicly substantiated, from Christopher Farrell of Judicial Watch, a nonprofit conservative foundation with a mission of fighting government corruption, to link the three terrorists to Arizona.
Redlener said schools are natural targets for terrorists because campus security officers rarely carry guns. He devotes 10 pages of his book to a graphic rendition of the takeover of two unnamed elementary schools.
First, "radical Islamists" enter the United States through one of three entry corridors on the U.S.-Mexican border and immerse themselves in society. The schools, "a large public elementary school with just over nine hundred students in kindergarten through grade 6 and a Catholic parochial school of more than four hundred students in pre-kindergarten through grade 8," would be taken simultaneously by terrorists with guns and grenades. Those who resist are killed execution-style and thrown out the windows, "where television crews capture the scene with long-range lenses."
The emergency response to the situation is severely hampered in this scenario, Redlener continues, by suicide bombers at the Tucson Police Department headquarters and the pediatric emergency ward at University Medical Center.
Twenty-eight hours later, the standoff ends when "commandos rush through the corridors, breaking down doors." More than 400 people, including students, have died.
Redlener, a father of two, said he's not out to incite panic and there is no government intelligence that proves Tucson is being targeted. What he hopes to do is awaken the public's consciousness that such an event could happen, and that the proper response agencies need to be making the right plans to prepare for it and the other four scenarios he mentions.
"It's simply to illustrate the kind of thinking that our intelligence community has to start having," he said.
Rural/Metro Fire Chief Les Caid said Tucson's responders include all school situations in their disaster planning.
"To say that this could never happen would be a real mistake in anyone's planning efforts," Caid said. "I'm sure the people in Columbine or the folks in Russia never thought it would happen to them."
But he said a suicide bomber could never get into police headquarters, and UMC employees are vigilant of suspicious people. Still, he said citizens should be made aware of all the possible dangers that they face.
"The challenge is not to scare everyone to death," he said.
Tucson Unified School District spokeswoman Chyrl Hill Lander said officials would rely on law enforcement in the event of such a situation. Schools would go into a "hard lockdown," she said, which means all classrooms would be locked and no one allowed to leave.
"Ever since Columbine, TUSD has been planning and preparing for any situation," Hill Lander said.
Redlener said he simply wants America to be more alert. "The only reason to do this is this is a time where we need to have our eyes open," he said. "We have to be vigilant with our planning."
* Contact reporter Jeff Commings at 573-4191 or jcommings@azstarnet.com
Isn't that like saying "Jumbo Shrimp".
It is a scenario I hope we never see unfold in this country.
Ditto
I have children in school. It's the biggest nightmare we have involving terrorism. I can't imagine the reaction I'd have to something like this occuring anywhere in the US, even a thousand miles away from our area.
Well...duh....is all I can say.....where in America is it guaranteed there are NO guns? (Generally speaking)
Re: your post #7:
I dearly hope you are right.
You mean guys like Dane.
And isn't that a shame?
IED kills too few kids, attacking a school forcing the principal to order a lock down during the attack will allow the terrorist to go classroom to classroom with explosive for the door locks, grenades for mass casaulties and submachineguns to pick off the survivors from the grenades. Several attack teams of 2 men, two team for each floor and corridors, each team coming in opposite directions can corner, kill and maim hundreds of kids within 30 minutes plus two teams for the roof overlooking the school grounds. Most schools instruct the teachers to keep the kids in the class room, lock the doors and wait for instructions from the PA. Guess what, if I were the attackers, the location of the PA microphone is the first room I take and disable. It would be 10 to 15 minutes before the teachers figure it out. Try a mass escape and the terrorist teams on the roof will spray the grounds with automatic gunfire and inform the teams within to open fire from the windows and cut the kids down as they emerge from the school to escape. Cops take time to arrive and the SWAT teams take hours to mobilize. Don't forget the attackers do not fear the arriving cops because they intend to die anyway. I know this is a nightmare scenario but Bin Laden had instructed his followers to find a way to kill 4.0 million Americans and half of them must be children. I figure 12 attackers can take out a suburban school of 500 to 1000 kids. Elementary schools would make great targets because the kids are too small to fight back or run away.
Scary scenario.
So do the Russians. Russians are appalled that we spank our children, just to cite one example. Probably explains why they seem to need such a strong state, far too many of them are spoiled brats with no self discipline.
Attacks on schools have worked for them in the past. Breslan in Russia. Many attacks in Israel, that is until they got off their PC behinds and armed their teachers. Our teachers would lose their jobs and go to jail, if they exercised their Constitutional right to be armed.
...and be deported or killed along with their Muslim buddies! < /wishful thinking >
True, but it will catch stoopid.
The lefites will lose all but their most hardened supporters and all hell will break loose. There will be demands from most of the American people to do something serious and forget this whole PC BS. If the muzzies think they are profiled and treated badly now, just wait ... it'll be very ugly.
I'm afraid that what would really happen here would be for our elected officials to curtail our rights by passing more gun laws.
Concealed handgun license holders are not allowed armed into schools.
I'm not so sure about liberals. What WILL convince them, however, is the reaction from the average American if such an event occurs.
If such an attack occurs, IMHO, the media (and liberals), who have been shilling for just about any anti-American cause since 2000, will 'get religion' to save their own hides.
Why? Because only one eye of that sleeping giant Yamamoto warned about is half-open. Kill innocents (not to demean the victims in WTC) and there will be a surge of rage. The world hasn't seen the American populace galvanized since WWII. If that happens, Pinch and his friends in the Muslim world won't have to worry about what is going to get shoved up their sphincter, because they'll be more worried about the cold resolve that comes from a people tired of so much crap.
Summed up from the movie 'Tombstone': "You called down the thunder, well now you've got it"
That's not my experience with Russians. Every Russian woman (wife, friends, aquaintences) I have ever spoken with is a strong beleiver in corporal punishment.
The Beslan Horror- When Hell Came Calling
various FR links | 09-07-04 | The Heavy Equipment Guy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1209052/posts
people walk around in our school and no one even asks who they are.
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