Members of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups operate in small cells hidden throughout the world, communicate infrequently and often with untraceable phone cards over random pay phones.
Plus, natural disasters span a wider breadth, where it takes longer to fully realize the scope of the damage, whereas terrorist attacks occur in small crowded areas, which accentuates the hysteria, making people think the tragedy is greater than perhaps it really is.
A weekend pilot who wanders into the airspace above Camp David (where the president was not staying at the time) is immediately characterized by the media as a possible terrorist; this followed by dire predictions from Homeland Security that the next wave of terrorist attacks will come in small planes.
When a terrorist cell is discovered in small town America, he joins "a ragtag group of people brought together with the task of protecting our freedom as we find the insurgents are homegrown".
Moreover, identifying and preventing such terrorists in advance of such small-scale attacks is a monumental task because most of these individuals have no prior links to terrorism and therefore are not on the radar of the law enforcement and counterterrorism communities.
I believe that opening American borders to the Syrian refugees, especially post-Paris, (and now post-San Beranardino) will actually diminish the amount of freshly radicalized terrorists in a world that gets smaller and smaller and more connected by the minute.
In 1999 Barot travelled to the Philippines, where he attended another terrorist camp and underwent further training in small arms, mortars, explosives handling, navigation and jungle patrolling.
If terrorists were buying weapons at these kinds of gun shows in small foreign countries, we might try bombing them.
The United States is not at war with the state army of Afghanistan or its people, but with a small group of terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
PH Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988), 10pm, Channel 4 The grandaddy of action movies, with Bruce Willis as indestructible New York cop John McClane tackling a small army of terrorists in an LA tower block.
