Those of you who champion the idea of a permanent location for the Olympics on a Greek isle cannot have given serious consideration to this idea. Just think e.g. of rowing (2000 m long body of water needed) or of wildwater canoeing (don't know how many cubic feet of water per second are needed) and then you would be among the first ones who cried about the damage to the environment on a Greek isle, about the irreversible damage to the landscape and about the tremendous cost (and energy need) of water transport. I understand the emotion behand that idea , but if you start thinking about it seriously with all that infrastructure, transport, accomodation for athletes, press and spectators, it does make no sense at all. And winter Olympics on a Greek island are not a viable idea at any time of the year.

To cancel or give back the winter Olympics to come would be extremely expensive, silly and against the best interests of the USA. You cannot single out one aspect of the costs, security, and forget about everything else like high damages to pay to TV, advertising agencies and single athletes. It would be an economic disaster for no insurance would cover the costs of a cancellation without much more explicit threats. The additional costs to security are peanuts compared to these costs. A rational approach could be to urge TV etc to help with the increasing costs for security.

The USA would signal to the world that they are afraid not to be able to guarantee security to guests and that they give in to terrorist threats. Each place now where many people gather the danger is increased and nevertheless the US government is well advised not to cancel any of these advents except if there would be a very specific threat. It would give the wrong signal to the world and would give terrorists too much power about our lives. I personally couldn't care less for instance whether an event called super bowl is held or not in the USA (just not my taste of sports that's all; same as many of you would not like sports I am interested in), but I'd advise any politician in the USA to do anything possible to hold such an event even at higher costs for security.

Many of you just do not like an event like the Olympic Games in the first place and would use just any argument against it that comes handy, be it environment, athletes health, or costs. There are many good arguments against Olympic , in principle, and I share many concerns about the (in the broadest sense) unhealthy aspects of modern sport. But too many arguments in this thread, as for example costs of security, are, how to put it nicely?, not well considered.

Wolfgang