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September 25, 2006

Fuzzy about the threat of terrorism? Consider the 'spinach problem'

SOUTH KINGSTOWN -- To understand what a terrorist could do to major American port, Stephen E. Flynn suggested today that we consider our response to the recent ``spinach problem.''

Even though the source of E. coli-contaminated spinach has been traced to a three-county area in California, Americans have virtually eliminated the leafy vegetable from their dinner tables. Regardless of where it was grown, people stopped buying spinach, leaving spinach growers elsewhere ``in a world of hurt.''

That tendency to overreact, and the chain of events that follows that reaction, is what creates the real crisis, rather than the incident itself, he said.

Flynn is the former commander of the U.S. Coast Guard, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a widely-cited expert on maritime and port security issues. He spoke at the University of Rhode Island today, as part of an international conference on port security, natural disasters and marine transportation issues. The conference continues tomorrow.

Americans, and especially their elected representatives, are “overwhelmingly ignorant'' of how the global transportation system works, he said.

“They have a woeful under-appreciation of its value, of the critical
role it plays in our prosperity,” he said. “And as a consequence of that, they
are prone to do silly things.”

-- Journal staff writer Timothy C. Barmann

Posted by Kate Bramson  at 4:54 PM | Permalink

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