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Why the US should not forget killers without a cause

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IN the cruel calculus of deaths and injuries, the explosion that rocked New York's financial district last week was not nearly the catastrophe it might have been. More people were killed in a single, execution-style slaying in a Bronx apartment a week earlier than died in the blast.

But the economic and psychological impact of the World Trade Centre bombing, like shock waves, has continued to spread, sending a long cold chill down the American spine.

Official estimates as to when hundreds of businesses and their 55,000 employees can return to the empty twin towers grow more pessimistic by the day. At first it was a matter of days, then a week. But the damage is profound.

Whether by design or by accident, the ton of dynamite - if that was the material used - that ripped through seven subterranean floors was perfectly placed to knock out virtually all the complex's communications, security and electrical networks. Now some experts are worried about structural integrity, and project a wait of several weeks before the buildings reopen.

In the meantime, dozens of big banking, accounting, brokerage and legal firms exiled from this financial and commercial nerve centre are scrambling to recover vital data, find temporary office space and serve their customers. One Japanese bank figures tolose US$20 million for every day they are unable to conduct business.

On Monday, the Governor of New York declared the site an economic disaster area, as if it had been hit by a hurricane. This disaster, however, was not an act of god but an act of man, which prompts two burning questions: Who? Why? The FBI, which is helping the New York police to investigate the bombing, has been stingy with information, but all the little bits and pieces collected so far seem to point in the same direction. Terrorism.

Terrorism is a familiar spectre to Americans. Many remember, as if it happened yesterday, the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut that left 241 soldiers dead, or the 259 passengers and twisted wreckage of Pan Am flight 103 strewn about the Scottish countryside near Lockerbie.

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