FBI issues holiday season warning to LA and Chicago shopping malls

Though "raw" intelligence, the FBI was right to pass on to LA and Chicago shopping malls a purported warning of an Al Qaeda attack during the upcoming holidays. One of the lessons of 9/11 for government is it is better to pass on warnings, however imprecise and indeterminate, than to sit on them until disaster strikes.

It would be prudent for the owners/operators of at least the largest and/or most popular shopping malls in these two cities to start deploying (or, as the case may be, intensify) armed police patrols; bomb detection and chemical sensors; and survelliance cameras. Such measures might well deter would be terrorists, and they would certainly reassure shoppers that the powers that be are vigilant and on the proverbial case.

We can never make ourselves invulnerable to terrorism. But, we can and should take commonsense steps like these to decrease the chances of a terror attack, and to minimize the consequences of attacks not prevented.