What would it take on our part to stop Al-Qaeda attacks tomorrow?
If you look at a terrorist attack, you can break it down into a series of links that have to come together. At one end, there are the obvious things that you can do, for example, to armor a target better so you can put barriers outside the Houses of Parliament, you can put soldiers in stations. Further down the line you have intelligence work, counterterrorism work, which can be very effective. Continue down the chain and you're into what makes people want to commit radical attacks - they're not mad, there's no evidence scientifically that terrorist over the ages are psychologically ill. They seem to be acting, at least they think they're acting, in a rational way with what are those factors that make them act in that way and here we're into the profound, very complex areas of social factors, cultural factors, historical factors, religious factors, economic factors, factors of relative deprivation, identity, so on so forth that lead an individual into a path of radicalism and allow him to be convinced that blowing himself up in a bus is the right thing to do. That is a hugely complex area, but it's not an area that is entirely without any possibility of improving - there are things that can be done. They are slow, they take a lot of time, they're complicated, but that threat can eventually be mitigated through policy action.
