Palestine - One State Solution

This is a very interesting article written by none other than Muammar Qaddafi, the President of Lybia in Newyork Times.
Original Article: The One-State Solution

THE shocking level of the last wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which ended with this weekend’s cease-fire, reminds us why a final resolution to the so-called Middle East crisis is so important. It is vital not just to break this cycle of destruction and injustice, but also to deny the religious extremists in the region who feed on the conflict an excuse to advance their own causes.

But everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward. A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions.

Although it’s hard to realize after the horrors we’ve just witnessed, the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed. In fact, many of the divisions between Jews and Palestinians are recent ones. The very name “Palestine” was commonly used to describe the whole area, even by the Jews who lived there, until 1948, when the name “Israel” came into use.

Jews and Muslims are cousins descended from Abraham. Throughout the centuries both faced cruel persecution and often found refuge with one another. Arabs sheltered Jews and protected them after maltreatment at the hands of the Romans and their expulsion from Spain in the Middle Ages.

The history of Israel/Palestine is not remarkable by regional standards — a country inhabited by different peoples, with rule passing among many tribes, nations and ethnic groups; a country that has withstood many wars and waves of peoples from all directions. This is why it gets so complicated when members of either party claims the right to assert that it is their land.

The basis for the modern State of Israel is the persecution of the Jewish people, which is undeniable. The Jews have been held captive, massacred, disadvantaged in every possible fashion by the Egyptians, the Romans, the English, the Russians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites and, most recently, the Germans under Hitler. The Jewish people want and deserve their homeland.

But the Palestinians too have a history of persecution, and they view the coastal towns of Haifa, Acre, Jaffa and others as the land of their forefathers, passed from generation to generation, until only a short time ago.

Thus the Palestinians believe that what is now called Israel forms part of their nation, even were they to secure the West Bank and Gaza. And the Jews believe that the West Bank is Samaria and Judea, part of their homeland, even if a Palestinian state were established there. Now, as Gaza still smolders, calls for a two-state solution or partition persist. But neither will work.

A two-state solution will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel. An armed Arab state, presumably in the West Bank, would give Israel less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point. Further, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would do little to resolve the problem of refugees. Any situation that keeps the majority of Palestinians in refugee camps and does not offer a solution within the historical borders of Israel/Palestine is not a solution at all.

For the same reasons, the older idea of partition of the West Bank into Jewish and Arab areas, with buffer zones between them, won’t work. The Palestinian-held areas could not accommodate all of the refugees, and buffer zones symbolize exclusion and breed tension. Israelis and Palestinians have also become increasingly intertwined, economically and politically.

In absolute terms, the two movements must remain in perpetual war or a compromise must be reached. The compromise is one state for all, an “Isratine” that would allow the people in each party to feel that they live in all of the disputed land and they are not deprived of any one part of it.

A key prerequisite for peace is the right of return for Palestinian refugees to the homes their families left behind in 1948. It is an injustice that Jews who were not originally inhabitants of Palestine, nor were their ancestors, can move in from abroad while Palestinians who were displaced only a relatively short time ago should not be so permitted.

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 — violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.” Yet only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.

Assimilation is already a fact of life in Israel. There are more than one million Muslim Arabs in Israel; they possess Israeli nationality and take part in political life with the Jews, forming political parties. On the other side, there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israeli factories depend on Palestinian labor, and goods and services are exchanged. This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine.

If the present interdependence and the historical fact of Jewish-Palestinian coexistence guide their leaders, and if they can see beyond the horizon of the recent violence and thirst for revenge toward a long-term solution, then these two peoples will come to realize, I hope sooner rather than later, that living under one roof is the only option for a lasting peace.

British Hypocracy

I read this interesting article in Rediff.com written by Sri B.Raman regarding the recent controversial remarks of British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband linking the attack in Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists to Kashmir issue.
Original link: Why Miliband tried to rationalise Mumbai attack.

There has been considerable anger and indignation in India British Foreign Secretary David Miliband attempt last week to rationalise the terrorist attack in Mumbai, by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba of Pakistan by linking the attack to the Kashmir issue.

None of the indigenous Kashmiri organisations has linked the Mumbai attack to Kashmir. Yet Miliband sought to provide a legitimacy to the LeT's terrorist attack by linking it to Kashmir, disregarding the fact that the attack, as seen from the brutal murder of nine Jewish persons and 12 nationals of Western countries, which have contributed forces to the NATO contingent in Afghanistan, was part of the global jihadi agenda unrelated to either Kashmir or the grievances of Indian Muslims.

The shocking attempt by Miliband to play down the murders of 138 Indians and 25 foreign nationals committed by the Pakistani terrorists should not have come as a surprise to those aware of the historic links of the British intelligence with the Mirpuri migrants from Pakistani-occupied Kashmir in the UK and their important role during elections in certain constituencies which traditionally return Labour candidates to the House of Commons with the support of the Mirpuri vote bank.

In this connection, I am reproducing below extracts from my article in 2007 on home grown jihadis in the UK and US.

"After Pakistan and Afghanistan, the UK has been traditionally for many years the largest sanctuary to foreign terrorists and extremists. Everybody, who is somebody in the world of terrorism, has found a rear base in the UK -- the Khalistanis in the past, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Mirpuris from PoK, the Chechens, the Al Muhajiroun, the Hizbut Tehrir etc. Having allowed such a medley of terrorists and extremists to operate unchecked from their territory for so long, British intelligence just does not have a correct estimate of how many sleeper cells are operating from their country and of which organisations.

"Since persons of Pakistani origin have been playing an increasingly active role in promoting the activities of al Qaeda, it is necessary to analyse the nature of migration from Pakistan to the UK and the US. Muslims from Pakistan constitute the single largest Muslim migrant group from the sub-continent in both the UK and the US -- followed by Indian and Bangladeshi Muslims. There are estimated to be about 700,000 Muslims of Pakistani origin in the UK. No estimate is available in respect of the US.

"The largest migrant group from Pakistan in the UK are Punjabi-speaking Muslims --from Pakistani Punjab as well as PoK. The migrants from PoK are called Mirpuris. They are not ethnic Kashmiris, but Punjabi-speaking migrants whose families had settled in the Mirpur area of the PoK for generations. They were essentially small farmers and landless labourers, who lost their livelihood as a result of the construction of the Mangla dam. They, therefore, migrated to West Europe -- the largest number to the UK and a smaller number to France , Germany and Scandinavian countries. Many of them preferred to go to the UK because it already had a large Punjabi-speaking community from Pakistani Punjab. The initial Mirpuri migrants, who hardly spoke English, felt themselves comfortable in a Punjabi-speaking environment.

"As the number of Muslims of Pakistani origin in the UK increased, mosques came up to cater to their religious needs. Till 1977, these mosques were headed by clerics from the more tolerant Barelvi Sunni sect. When General Zia-ul-Haq, a devout Deobandi, captured power in Pakistan in 1977, he embarked on a policy of marginalising the influence of Barelvi clerics not only in Pakistan, but also in Europe and increasing the influence of the rabid Deobandis. He inducted Deobandis into the education department as Arab teachers and into the armed forces to cater to the religious needs of the military personnel. He encouraged and helped the Deobandis to take over the mosques in Pakistan and in the UK by replacing the Barelvis. With the induction of an increasing number of Deobandis started the process of the Arabisation/Wahabisation of the Muslims in Pakistan and of the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK.

"The intelligence agencies of the US and the UK went along with Zia's policy of Arabising/Wahabising the Muslims of Pakistan because this contributed to an increase in the flow of jihadis to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Till 1983, the members of the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK were considered a largely law-abiding people. The first signs of the radicalisation of the Diaspora appeared in 1983 when a group of jihadi terrorists kidnapped Ravi Mhatre, an Indian diplomat posted in the Indian Assistant High Commission in Birmingham, and demanded the release of Maqbool Butt, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, who was then awaiting execution in Tihar jail in Delhi following his conviction on charges of murder. When India rejected their demand, the terrorists killed Mhatre and threw his body into one of the streets. This kidnapping and murder was allegedly orchestrated by Amanullah Khan, a Gilgiti from Pakistan. He was assisted by some Mirpuris. The British were uncooperative with India in the investigation and declined to hand over those involved in the kidnapping and murder to India for investigation and prosecution. By closing their eyes to the terrorist activities of the Mirpuris from their territory, they encouraged the further radicalisation of the Diaspora.

"Just as the radicalisation of the Muslims of Pakistan suited the US-UK agenda in Afghanistan, the radicalisation of the Diaspora in the UK, particularly the Mirpuris, suited their agenda for balkanising Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Many Pakistanis from the UK went to the training camps of the Harkat-ul-Ansar (now called the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) and the Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Pakistan and got themselves trained with the knowledge and complicity of the British. They then went to Bosnia and Kosovo to wage a jihad against the Serbs with arms and ammunition and explosives allegedly supplied by the Iranian intelligence with the tacit consent of the Bill Clinton administration and paid for by the Saudi intelligence. As the Pakistani prime minister between 1993 and 1996, Benazir Bhutto had visited these jihadis in the UK. After waging their jihad against the Serbs, they moved from the UK to Pakistan to join the HUA and the LeT and participate in the jihad against India.

"The most notable example of the home-grown UK jihadis who turned against them is Omar Sheikh. From Bosnia, he came to India to wage a jihad and was arrested by the Indian security forces. He was released following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar by a group of Harkat-ul-Maujahideen terrorists. After his release, he went to Pakistan and orchestrated the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. The second notable example is Rashid Rauf, a Mirpuri, who went to Pakistan from the UK to join the Jaish-e-Mohammad after marrying a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Jaish amir. He was allegedly involved in the plot detected by the London police in August 2006 to blow up a number of US-bound planes. This plot was hatched by some members of the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK. (Rauf was recently killed in a US Predator strike on an al Qaeda hide-out in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan)

"The Mirpuris were in the forefront of those supporting jihadi terrorism against India in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India since 1993, when the Pakistani jihadi organisations of Afghan vintage were infiltrated into India by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. They collected and sent funds to the jihadi terrorists in India. Many of them underwent training in the camps of the LeT, HuM, JeM and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami in Pakistan. The British intelligence was aware of members of the Diaspora going to Pakistan for training, but closed its eyes to it since it thought that they were going to wage a jihad against the Indians in J&K.

"A careful examination of the details relating to the various jihadi terrorism-related cases in the UK would reveal that MI5 was intercepting the telephone conversations of these Mirpuris and other Punjabi Muslims with their friends and relatives in which they spoke of going to Pakistan for jihadi training. It did not take any action against them because it thought that they were going to wage a jihad only against the Indians and hence did not pose a threat to the British. The MI5 intercepted the telephone conversation of even one of the perpetrators of the London blasts of July 2005, about his going to Pakistan for jihadi training. It did not act on it thinking he intended to wage a jihad against the Indians. Only after the London blasts, did MI5 realise with a rude shock that this Mirpuri was talking not of going to India to wage a jihad against the Indians, but to London to wage a jihad against the British.

"Today, innocent British civilians are paying for the sins of commission and omission of their authorities since jihadi terrorism broke out in Indian territory in 1989. It would be very difficult for the MI5 to have an accurate idea of the number of trained Pakistani jihadis already in their midst. Reliable police sources in Pakistan say that there are at least about 200 trained, potential suicide bombers in the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK waiting for an opportunity to strike. These trained potential suicide bombers also provide a recruitment reservoir for future operations of Al Qaeda in the US homeland.

"The position in the Pakistani Diaspora in the US is somewhat different. The initial wave of migrants to the US from Pakistan consisted largely of Urdu-speaking Mohajirs from Sindh, who originally went to Pakistan from India. The influence of the more tolerant Barelvi sect on them is still very strong. The extremist Deobandi/Wahabi ideology has not yet made the same impact on them as it has on the Punjabi-speaking Pakistani Diaspora in the UK. Moreover, there has hardly been any migration of the Mirpuris from the PoK into the US. Most of the Kashmiri migration into the US has been of ethnic Kashmiris -- either Hindu Pandits, who were driven out of the Valley by the jihadi terrorists after 1989, or sufi Muslims from the valley. The Muslims from the valley, who had migrated to the US from J&K, are politically active against India, but they have so far kept away from the Deobandis and Wahabis.

"Since the 1980s, there has been an increase in the migration of Punjabi-speaking Muslims from Pakistan into the US. There has been growing Deobandi/Wahabi influence on them. It is these elements that al Qaeda has been targeting for recruitment. A saving grace is that the US intelligence has a better awareness than the British of the dangers that could arise from its population of Pakistani origin and has been keeping a tight watch on them. The British are paying a heavy price for their negligence till now."

Congress Ditching Telangana

After going through the news reports past couple of days, it looks like the more than 100 year old Congress Party is shying away in implementing what it stated in its manifesto - a Second State Re-Organization Commission (SRC) which will decide on the separate statehood for Telangana.


The Congress, which is ruling now, took the support of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in the previous elections saying that they are in support for a separate Telangana state and won the elections. The opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which was in power at that time was dead against separate state. Now, with the elections just couple of months away, the parties have taken completely opposite stand.

The TDP, which is in opposition is now supporting Telangana while the Congress Party which is ruling the state is against Telangana.


Looks like these two major political parties are taking the aspirations of the 3 Crore Telangana people for a ride. These two Political parties have got habituated in going against what they have pledged during the election campaigns. At the sametime, Telanganites have got used to getting ditched by their own politicians whom they elected.

For the sake of getting Ministries in the Central and State Governments, the TRS also didn't take up the Telangana issue vigorously. They sat on the issue and now with elections very nearby, they are again taking up the issue seriously - once again to take the people for a ride.


All these political parties should be taught a lesson. Unless they come out with a timeline for a separate Telangana, we should not vote to these parties.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had already stated that once they are in power in the central government, they would give Telangana within 6 months. During the earlier BJP rule, they carved our states like Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh and proved that they would stick to their word. The BJP had already passed a resolution for separate Telangana state in their once in a year meetings. Other parties have still not passed such a resolution in their own meetings.

Before we go for voting, we got to make sure to vote to those parties which stick to their word.

Few Takers For India's Anti-ISI Campaign

This is a very interesting Article by Mr.B.Raman who was additional secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi and, presently, director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.

Few Takers For India's Anti-ISI Campaign:

Forty-five days after the Mumbai terrorist strike of November 2008, India has failed to convince large sections of the international community that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence had orchestrated the terrorist strike in Mumbai through the Lashkar e Tayiba. That is my conclusion after interactions with a wide spectrum of foreign counter-terrorism experts -- governmental as well as non-governmental.

The experts from the various countries whose nationals died at the hands of the terrorists are convinced on the basis of their own substantial independent technical intelligence that the terrorist attack was carried out by 10 Pakistani nationals belonging to the LeT, who came to Mumbai by boat from Karachi for carrying out the strike. They are also convinced on the basis of the voluminous evidence in their archives about the privileged relationship between the ISI and the LeT. But they claim not to have seen any conclusive evidence so far to show that the ISI -- or at least its present leadership -- had orchestrated the Mumbai terrorist attack.

A question they pose, which is logical and compelling, is whether the terrorists would have killed nationals of the US, the UK, France , Italy , Germany , Canada and Australia if they had been deputed by the ISI to indulge in the carnage.

Some of these experts, who were earlier convinced of the ISI's hand behind the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in the first week of July 2008, when Lt Gen Nadeem Taj, the present corps commander at Gujranwala, was the ISI director-general, are prepared to allow for the possibility that Taj, before he was removed from the ISI on September 30, 2008, allegedly under US pressure by Gen Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan's chief of the army staff, might have also planned the Mumbai attack by the LeT and got its cadres chosen for the attack trained.

In this connection, it is significant that Ajmal Kasab , the Pakistani in the custody of the Mumbai police, had reportedly stated during his interrogation that the attack was originally planned for September 26 but was postponed. These experts point out that Taj was still the DG of the ISI on September 26.

The Americans allegedly got Taj removed because of their conviction that he was the brain behind the Kabul attack and that Taj, who has a reputation of being rabidly anti-Indian and anti-US, had leaked out some information shared by the Americans with him to the Taliban . It was generally presumed till now on the basis of some past reports in sections of the Pakistani media about Taj being related to Pervez Musharraf that he must be a Mohajir, but some Western experts claim that he is actually a Punjabi-speaking Kashmiri.

If this is so, the ISI had been headed by Punjabi-speaking Kashmiris twice in its history. The other Kashmiri head of the ISI was Lt Gen (retired) Javed Nasir, who headed the ISI during Nawaz Sharif's first tenure as prime minister (1990-93). The Mumbai blasts of March 1993 were orchestrated by him. He was removed by Sharif from the ISI under US pressure because of his perceived non-cooperation in the US attempts to buy back unused Stinger missiles from the Afghan Mujahideen . It was during his tenure that the Clinton Administration had declared Pakistan as a suspected State-sponsor of terrorism. This designation was removed six months later, after Sharif had removed Nasir from the ISI along with some other officers disliked by the US.

Thus, while some American experts have an open mind on the possibility of Taj's involvement in the Mumbai carnage, they are prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who has been the DG of the ISI since September 30, 2008. He enjoys a good reputation in the West as a balanced person, who would not indulge in such an operation, particularly when it is partly directed against Western nationals and Jewish civilians.

Every country whose nationals died during the terrorist attack has been making a detailed analysis of why its nationals were targeted and killed. For example, the terrorists also killed the nationals of three countries in South-East Asia, one of them a Chinese woman from Singapore. According to one version that one heard in Singapore, the terrorists forced her to phone her foreign office in Singapore and request it to urge the Government of India not to send the security forces into the hotels. According to the version prevalent in Singapore, when the Singapore foreign office refused to intercede in this matter, the terrorists shot her dead. Why did they do so? What is the reason for their apparent anger against Singapore? This is a question which kept propping up.

Apart from the way the attack was planned and executed, the most significant aspect of the attack was the targeting of foreign nationals -- particularly the cream of the foreign business community who frequent these hotels. It was because of this that the Western technical intelligence agencies diverted all their capabilities to cover the conversations between the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan. It is said the US moved one of its communication satellites over Mumbai during the 60 hours that the drama lasted in order to cover these conversations.

After the drama was over and the National Security Guard had rescued the surviving hostages, the Western countries had all their surviving nationals quietly flown to Europe where they were thoroughly debriefed by special teams from their intelligence agencies. It is said the French even sent a special plane for evacuating their and other Western survivors from Mumbai to Paris. Western experts are surprised that neither the Mumbai police nor the central intelligence agencies showed any interest in detaining the surviving foreign hostages in India in order to debrief them thoroughly. If they had done so, the details collected by them would have formed an important part of the dossier prepared by the ministry of home affairs and disseminated to foreign governments. It is said that such details which could have been obtained by debriefing the foreign survivors, hardly figure in the dossier.

According to foreign experts, the Mumbai police and the central intelligence agencies were so excited by the capture of one of the Pakistani perpetrators that they seem to have devoted all their attention to interrogating him and getting as many details as possible which could help them fix Pakistan. They complain that other important aspects which might have helped them in reconstructing the terrorist attack, drawing the right lessons from it and preventing a repetition of similar attacks in future have not received much attention.

Pakistan's argument that the Government of India has been trying to divert attention from the colossal failure of its counter-terrorism machinery in Mumbai by focussing on the alleged involvement of the ISI has started having some takers abroad due to the unprofessional manner in which the aftermath of the terrorist strike has been handled by the government. It is important to hold Pakistan accountable for using terrorism against India through concrete evidence. At the same time, it is equally important to identify the deficiencies in our counter-terrorism machinery and act quickly to remove them. This is not being done.

The Mumbai carnage has caused great concern in the Western countries for two reasons. First, the jihadi terrorists in India who had in the past showed an increasing preference for explosives over hand-held weapons, have gone back to hand-held weapons for attacking private establishments such as hotels, which have anti-explosive checks but no armed guards to foil an attack with hand-held weapons. Of the fatalities in Mumbai, only five were reportedly caused by explosives. The remaining were caused by hand-held weapons (assault rifles and hand-grenades).

This trend, of the jihadi terrorists going back to hand-held weapons, was first noticed in the Anbar province of Iraq after 1993 when the Al Qaeda killed a number of Americans and others with hand-held weapons. It was noticed in Pakistan in 2007. When the Jihadis failed to kill Benazir Bhutto with an explosive device at Karachi in October 2007, they used a mix of a hand-held weapon and an explosive to successfully kill her at Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. This trend was noticed in Afghanistan in 2008. While there was reportedly a one-third increase in the use of explosive devices in Afghanistan, there was a simultaneous increase in the use of hand-held weapons for precision killings. This trend has now spread to the Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir.

Secondly, many Western experts feel that there was an Al Qaeda hand in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attack and that such precision planning and execution would not have been possible without the involvement of some locals. While Indian experts have been able to quantify reasonably well the threat which they would continue to face in J&K, they have not been able to quantify in similar manner the threat from sections of Indian youth outside J&K because of a fear in political circles that such an exercise for quantification might have an adverse effect on the Muslim vote in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

US Congressional committees and professional counter-terrorism organisations in the West are already examining the Mumbai carnage in order to draw lessons for themselves and to prevent a Mumbai-style attack in their country. Surprisingly, such an exercise is hardly to be seen in India. All the debate till now has been on what the options are against Pakistan. There has hardly been any public debate on what the options are against the terrorists in order to prevent another major attack.

NY Cops Learn Lessons From Mumbai Terror Attack:

A New York Police Department team that visited Mumbai to understand the mechanics of the multiple terrorist strikes of November 26 has identified the use of technology, particularly cell phones, by terrorists as a means of communication and information dissemination as a potential danger to guard against.

Based on this learning, mainstream media outlets in the United States report, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly in testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security has asked for "formidable capacity" to disrupt cell phone and other communications in case of terrorist strikes.

Kelly pointed out that in the past, anti-terrorist operations included the cutting of power to the site of the attack. However, the use of wireless technology and hand held devices renders such action ineffective; hence, Kelly argued, it becomes necessary to jam such communications capability in a targeted fashion.

Kelly told the committee that the NYPD is taking several measures to thwart a Mumbai-style killing spree in NY. Planned measures include proscribing boat access to sensitive zones, training police in the use of modern weapons and counter-terrorist strategies and tactics, and installing spycams across downtown Manhattan.

Charles Allen, the top intelligence official in the DHS, told the Senate committee that the response to Mumbai-type terrorist attacks anywhere in the US would be "complicated and difficult", arguing that such attacks cause chaos far in excess of the number of personnel involved.

Information, he said, was key. "In Mumbai it was not immediately clear to authorities whether there were multiple attack groups or a single group. The attackers were able to exploit the initial confusion because of the indiscriminate firings to move on to new targets."

Allen suggested that preparedness training alone could not have prevented such an attack; however, such preparation -- involving concerted action by police, military and various levels of government -- could have mitigated the effect of the attack. Based on this learning, Allen said, it was necessary to rethink the US model.

Within the United States," Allen said, "our national exercises incorporate not only federal inter-agency participants, but also include regional, state, and local authorities, in order to identify potential gaps in our responses."