US officials will conduct an exercise Saturday to test their readiness to respond in the event that various bomb attacks are carried out across the country, said Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman. However, one Democratic House member said that he believes "they're watching too many reruns" of the popular television show about counterterrorism agents, 24.
High-level officials in the administration and other key government posts will take part in the hours-long "tabletop" exercise described as "part of the administration's efforts to test the policies, plans and procedures to protect the American people," Stanzel said.
He stressed that the exercise "is not based on any current or real threat, but it's an exercise on hypothetical IED (improvised explosive device) attacks."
The officials will "go through scenarios, so there is a fictional scenario, and the officials (will) talk about how they would react in the event of this fictional attack, and ... what plans and procedures they would put in place," the spokesman said.
President George W. Bush will not participate in the exercise, he said.
Reporting for Newsweek in a web exclusive, Michael Isikoff writes, "While planning for domestic terror attacks is not new, the focus on IEDs in this weekend’s exercise seems at least tacit recognition that the wave of such attacks that have been killing soldiers and civilians in Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan could spread to the United States."
"But one Democratic lawmaker quickly questioned the need for such elaborate exercises, saying this one seemed more the product of overheated imaginations than real-life threats," Isikoff adds.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) tells Newsweek, "Sometimes I have a sense they’re watching too many reruns of 24."
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/White_House_rehearses_for_domestic_attack_0224.html
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