What about those "intelligence warnings" ??

[changemonger]

There's something about almost every terrorists' attack that is rarely discussed and that I find a bit disturbing : the intelligence warnings. As it turned out after the Mumbai attacks, India has been warned, just like the US before 9/11, the UK before the London bombings,... Isn't the primary role of intelligence agencies to AVOID those attacks and how do they know about them before they happen anyway ?. I know that the ETA in spain calls the authorities a few minutes before the attacks to warn them , but in the case of India,London or 9/11 there were ,as reported, warnings weeks or maybe months before the attacks . Why would the intelligence know about impending attacks and do nothing significant to stop them from happening ? I don't get it, do you?

[BuyingThyme]

1. For the same reason that

they keep charging prisoners in U.S.-run concentration camps with crimes they clearly didn't commit.

[mwei924]

2. I suspect that the agencies simply get too many "warnings" everyday.

Of course, in the end, one of them turns out to be spot on but I think it can be difficult to predict which ones to put at the top of the list when you're bombarded with warnings from all directions. We can all agree that they can be more thorough and careful.

[jberryhill]

3. Vague...

There is always someone warning about something.

"Some informant says that there will be some kind of action in Mumbai during the next five weeks."

What are you supposed to do with that? Lock down tens of millions of people for the duration?

As if police are supposed to be "extra careful to look out for a bunch of dudes toting guns". On any other day, a bunch of dudes toting guns would be perfectly normal.

Whenever anything happens anywhere, everyone else says, "Oh, yeah, we had a warning about that." It's for domestic consumption.

When this happens, I'll tell everyone I called it:

Sometime in the next year, or maybe more than that, a lone terrorist, or group of terrorists, is going to try to attack something, so be ready. The location is going to be someplace unexpected, but something you would expect he, she or they to try to attack. It will happen in a populated area. They will be using weapons, possibly explosives, possibly guns and/or knives.

There you go, so be on the lookout for that.