Thursday February 24, 2005

I've Been Thinking:

Israel's police tested their hospital security today.

They hid 4 dummy bombs in ambulances and sent them into the hospitals.
3 got right through. 1 was discovered. What a failure!

The warnings are out there blasting as loud as ambulance sirens.
** Ambulances and hospitals have already been placed high up on the target lists of terrorists.
** Terrorists have already successfully used ambulances to carry bombs across checkpoints.
** There have been numerous alerts that terrorists were trying to steal ambulances to use as vehicles to conceal and transport bombs, even to blow them up.

Other than the obvious -- that security is severely, perilously, lax and lacking -- several essential lessons must be drawn from this test.
Hospitals, schools, places of religious assembly, public spaces, they must all be treated alike.
Drills and practices must continue in all public and pedestrian areas.
Terror will never be completely eradicated but practice and vigilance are the only way to improve security.

Even in Israel, a country in a state of heightened of alert things slip through.
Imagine what is happening in the US.