434
I suppose it just reminds us of how vulnerable we all are nowadays. How a city that only yesterday was celebrating the announcement that it would host the 2012 Olympic Games can be brought so low so quickly is tragic. There is no defence and there can be no justification for these cowardly acts. There can be no hiding-place and no sympathy for the people who planned and executed them. They must be hunted down and brought to justice. They will be caught, for they cannot be allowed to escape responsibility. Their grievances against the West gives them as much right to kill innocent people as our governments have to kill the innocent men, women and children that the terrorists claim to represent - no right. The commuters on the London Underground today - like those on Madrid's Cercania last year and the men and women in and around the World Trade Center and on board the hijacked aircraft on 11 September - were not world leaders. They do not make the decisions to invade other countries. They do not decide on foreign policy or economic policy. Yet they, and by that I mean we, are the soft targets. We are the victims. I have to put some context into this. There are eight men sitting in a hotel 40 miles from where I am sitting as I write. These men all have their own small armies of secret service bodyguards surrounding them and watching their every move. They are sitting in a luxury hotel which is in the centre of a two-mile exclusion zone the boundary of which is formed by an 8-foot high and 10-foot wide security fence. Above the hotel there are helicopter gunships patrolling the exclusion zone, within the zone, there are secret service agents, SAS units, army and police snipers and anti-aircraft batteries. Public roads in and around Gleneagles have been closed to the public, and the entire area is patrolled by over 10,000 police officers from every police force in the United Kingdom. Apparently several hundred London police officers are in Perthshire, protecting eight men. Almost all of Dundee's police are either at Gleneagles or in Edinburgh... there are hardly any police left to safeguard the public from ordinary criminals - let alone terrorists. This morning, a flight of RAF helicopters flew over Linda's office. These helicopters were carrying the world leaders' wives from Gleneagles to Glamis Castle - which had been closed to the public for the day, and completely surrounded by army and police. I'll bet they didn't even have to pay to get in. These eight men - the ones who make the decisions - (and their wives) are safe in their little cocoon, protected at our expense, while we are left at the mercy of the terrorists - unprotected, undefended. My heart goes out to the victims of today's outrage, and to their families.

There but for the grace...