PANDORA'S CONTAINER Thousands of shipping containers enter our major seaports every day and no one seems to know how many of them have
been in inspected for reasons of homeland security.
It has been, and continues to be, one of our major unsolved concerns as we have worked our way, slowly at times, but steadily toward the day when we can stop worrying about potential attacks and begin to place our trust in those preparations we have made. The gradual attainment to a more secure life for all is sometimes difficult for some individual to realize how much living has changed since "Nine-Eleven".
Our major sea port cities are still inadequately prepared to forestall an in-filtering attack using clandestine weaponry. A relatively simple "bomb" well within the manufacturing skills o scores of our enemies and any one of them could deliver vast devastation to almost any of our coastal metro areas. The logical path of such attacks is through the mis-use of the omni-present shipping container which is the symbol of our commercially centered century.
Thousand of such containers are checked for improper use use but thousands are also completing the entire route across the face of the world's seas without any security check whatsoever being made at any point.i The very nature of the business make more or less impossible to do more than a modest job. This is not a time for seeking to place blame for shortcomings , but rather a time when we must, as individuals, whatever we do best better.
This is not the biggest threat we face. The largest potential for loss of life are the open initiations we send the world's terrorists is to be seen almost daily in our national mania for gathering together in large and large crowds or sporting events, religious gathering, entertainment "concerts" even shopping.
We have yet to meet the terrorist first-hand in our midst.Do we face such a phase in our present war?
A.L.M. July 5, 2005 [c348wds]
