Word: aurora
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...think Najibullah Zazi would stand out on the high, dry plains southeast of Denver, where the earth is as flat as a starched shirt and mere wrinkles count as topography. But if heartland suburbs were ever enclaves of uniformity, that day is long gone. Aurora, Colo., is a city of people from somewhere else, a low-slung municipality of 315,000 that includes extremes of both poverty and prosperity. Aurora is vast - nearly 154 sq. mi. (400 sq km) - and dense, with a high concentration of multifamily housing units, apartment buildings, townhouses and condominiums. Those homes contain a patchwork...
...After his bomb training in Pakistan, Zazi returned to New York City and then moved to Aurora, joining relatives in a house on East Ontario Drive, a few doors down from the chief of police. Why Aurora? The answer may be as simple as the low cost of living, the presence of a few relatives and the familiar terrain. The dry plains, thin air and faraway peaks bear no small resemblance to northern Pakistan and Paktia province. Zazi passed a background check to qualify as an airport-shuttle driver, and if he was notable for anything, it was his appetite...
...history, is not winding down. The longer it goes on, the more likely that the enemy will try to find new fronts closer to home. The hard debates over the use of force, surveillance tactics, interrogation methods and the rights of terrorists have many chapters yet to be written. Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer puts the idea slightly differently: "The lesson is that even if you don't see yourself as one of those high-visibility targets, you can wake up to find a terrorist down the block...
...Aurora, the feds may have found a needle in a haystack. But how many are in the process of disappearing right now? How much more should be done to find them? And how long will it be before one of them jabs us again...
Zazi was born in Afghanistan's war-torn border region, moving to Pakistan at age 7 and then to New York in 1999. He spent just nine months living in Aurora, initially moving in with an aunt and uncle who own a brick townhouse in a manicured development at the edge of the parched Colorado prairie. More recently, he moved into a nearby two-bedroom apartment, which he shared with his father and two brothers until they were evicted shortly before the arrests. With more than $50,000 in credit-card debt, Zazi declared bankruptcy last March...