Terrorism Preparedness Since September 11, 2001, the Research Paper

Terrorism Preparedness

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has made a significant progress guiding against terrorist attacks using terrorism preparedness to forestall further terrorism attacks in the United States. Terrorism preparedness exercise is a broad range of response and preparedness program to support communities that might be affected by the terrorist attack. (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, 2004).

Typically, the U.S. government has implemented a range of program for terrorism preparedness and one of the policies employed is the use of wide range of intelligence to investigate the imminent terrorism that might have occurred in the United States. Typically, the U.S. intelligence has collaborated with other intelligences globally to prevent act of terrorism in the United States. For example, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has collaborated with Pakistan intelligence to locate the hideout of Ben Laden and killed him.

Moreover, the United States has implemented various military exercises for terrorism preparedness. For example, the federal government has coordinated with the states and local governments in carrying out the terrorism preparedness. Typically, the government has implemented various training program for military personnel and non-military personnel to forestall terrorist attacks. The training program includes bomb detection program exercise, evacuation program exercise, and medical intervention exercise in case of terrorist attack. For example, the government has formed the NDMS (National Disaster Medical System) to coordinate hospital and medical care program for mass causalities in case of terrorist attacks.

One of strengths of the current terrorist preparedness exercise is that the government has been able use to the program to identify and prevent the act of terrorism in the United States. Since September 11, 2001, there is no major terrorist attack in the United States. Moreover, the government has used the information sharing strategy to share information with law enforcement agency to increase alertness and preparedness activities.

However, the media comment on government policy on terrorist preparedness identifies the weakness of the current policy in the face of the current threat of global terrorism. The press believes that the government is spending large amount of taxpayer's money to combat global terrorism instead of focusing on the strategy to combat national terrorism. Since 2001, the U.S. has overspent the taxpayer financial resources for the program implementation, which may be waste of financial resources.

Moreover, sharing of intelligence information with other non-U.S. intelligences serves as risks to the U.S. effective intelligence agency.

II: Hurricane Katrina

The hurricane Katrina of August 29, 2005 was one of the devastating hurricane incidents in the United States leading to damages of properties worth several million of dollars. The incidents also led to the death of 1,700 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The region affected New Orleans city and neighboring Mississippi. The NRP (National Response Plan) is formed in response to natural disaster such as hurricane or terrorist attack. Despite the decision to form NRP for the response…