Prepare our cities for war with Iraq

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Jack Weiss and Michael O´Hanlon

While the President decides whether to march to Baghdad, Saddam Hussein may be poised to bring the battle to American cities via terrorism. Yet Washington's focus on creating a new Department of Homeland Security has left America's cities not much better protected than they were sixteen months ago.
The much-ballyhooed but still unfunded federal First Responder Initiative has given American cities a false sense of security. Only $3.5 billion has been promised — and not yet appropriated — by Congress. Of this, only 75 percent will make it to the county level, where another bureaucratic bite will be taken before the money is passed on to cities.
We can't make up for a year lost to other federal priorities, but here are five things the Administration should do right away to bolster local efforts to prevent and respond to a terrorist attack.
• Provide Interconnector Technology to Link Local Emergency Radio Systems in America's Largest Urban Areas. On September 11, New York Police Department helicopter pilots reported their assessment that the towers were likely to collapse imminently, unaware that the firefighters in the buildings could not hear the transmissions. Different jurisdictions in the Washington, DC area were also unable to cross-communicate during the sniper attacks of this past October.
And the problem persists. In Los Angeles County alone, 88 independent jurisdictions must be able to communicate in a major emergency. However their radio frequencies are still incompatible, with some departments using analog systems while others use digital.

-- Anonymous, December 31, 2002

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-- Anonymous, December 31, 2002

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