Once the Global War on Terrorism encountered unanticipated difficulties – simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan requiring more troops than those readily available – the Pentagon was unable to come up with the needed reinforcements.
He credits some of his resolve to having had previous encounters with terrorism.
(Its last encounter with terrorism was in 1985, when French spies bombed a Greenpeace ship).
In 1919, the British government had its first major encounter with terrorism, when the Irish Republican Army was established to drive the British out of Ireland.
"The October Crisis," as it's now known in Canada, was that country's first encounter with terrorism, and I witnessed it firsthand.
Since September, the entire American effort to fight terrorism has encountered a certain skepticism in the Middle East, where the idea that the attacks on the United States were the work of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's network, was not fully accepted.
Instead, Gill became the subject of a "suspicious activity report," or SAR, which police officers fill out when they believe they're encountering a person or situation that "reasonably" might be connected in some way to terrorism.
As in Tampa, such systems are routinely justified on anti-terrorism grounds, and encounter little opposition in places such as Britain and Spain, whose citizens are used to living with the threat of terrorism.
Romijn plays Eve Baird, a counter-terrorism agent who encounters Flynn while chasing down her own set of bad guys.
"Of the 508 defendants, 243 had been targeted through an FBI informant, 158 had been caught in an FBI terrorism sting, and 49 had encountered an agent provocateur.
