Not Trudeau, But Important! Questions about Attack in Hamburg, Germany....
German authorities today are incredibly definitive that events that led to the mass evacuation of Hamburg Airport (second largest City in Germany and eight largest in European Union) with some fifty people taken to hospital with burning eyes and respiratory issues was not a terrorist attack. However, it remains that German authorities have said that a pepper spray can has been discovered, and that it appears pepper spray went at some point through the airport’s air conditioning system, causing the mass casualty situation, forcing the evacuation of the Hamburg airport, and shutting it down to incoming flights.
If I was part of Germany’s government and security services, and if the reports of pepper spray put into the air conditioning system are accurate, then I would be saying the same thing that it was not a terrorist attack. Why you ask? It was so easy, and because this incident could have been much worse. Pepper spray in the air conditioning system shut down a transportation hub, and terrified a crowd, injuring 50 innocents.
Observers could rightly ask, what if the pepper spray had been Mustard gas, or Cyanide, or Sarin nerve agent and the list goes on? Remember it was only 1995 when a little known doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, in Tokyo, Japan used crude projectors to deploy Sarin nerve gas into the subway system killing 13 and injuring 6000. Since that time, we know that Al Qaeda experimented with Chemical weapons and poisons and would use them as they had them. The Islamic State has reportedly gathered up Sarin nerve gas in Libya and Mustard gas and has allegedly done the same in Syria, along with Tabun nerve gas and Chlorine. The Islamic State has reportedly used Chlorine and Mustard gas in Syria and Iraq and there have been several reports of their intentions to smuggle these weapons into Europe for use against western targets.
Therefore, it is with some relief that the world got off lucky today in Hamburg, Germany. Sadly, the incident begs several questions providing initial reports that it was pepper spray are true. How did pepper spray get into the Hamburg Airport’s air conditioning system? How difficult was it to access the system? Who carried out this attack and what was their motivation? If it was not a prank, and an act of terror, or a test by terrorists, why didn’t they use something stronger? Did they not have the expertise or the ability to smuggle or create the chemical weapons in Europe? Lastly, given what happened today in Hamburg, how long do we have in the Western world before the Islamic State or Al Qaeda carries out an actual attack with chemical weapons or a biological weapon on a mass transit facility?
