Wherever Rudy Giuliani goes 'for my consultancy business' terror follows- Be it New york, London or Mumbai...!!

"Mumbai, London, New York: terrorism is part of my life" --Rudy Giuliani

I was also recovering from jet lag after an eight-day trip to India and Dubai for my consultancy business. I’d left India just four days before the attacks on Mumbai, so I felt very moved as I watched the events unfold on the internet. I was surprised by the scale of the attacks.

I was in London when the 7/7 bombings happened and near Liverpool Street station when the first bomb went off. Those followed the classic pattern of attacks in three or four bursts, not at such a concerted level right across the city as happened in India. I don’t think Mumbai was prepared for a terrorist attack and I would have said that even before what happened.

Whenever I visit a city, one of the things I do is try to assess how ready it is for catastrophe. Before 9/11 my role as mayor of New York meant that I always judged other cities in terms of cleanliness, order, policing and traffic. After 9/11 I still tried to gauge all those things, but I also started to look at how ready they might be for a terrorist attack.

London is ready. Your firefighters and police all know how to handle a crisis and you have good emergency responses. After 7/7 you stopped those planes being bombed – the intelligence services across Europe have prevented far more attacks than have taken place. That doesn’t mean we won’t miss one, of course.

Although the Indian government denies it, Mumbai was warned that some kind of incident might happen. The question is how specific that warning was. I would suggest Mumbai needs its own intelligence services on the ground.

Credit: Various News Sites