Posted on 05/25/2008 9:58:11 AM PDT by The_Republican
You know that we are living in scary times. Terrorist groups are metastasizing all over the globe. Al Qaeda has re-established its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hizbullah, Hamas and other radical Islamic groups are gaining strength. You hear this stuff all the time, on television and on the campaign trail. Amid the din, it's hard to figure out the facts. Well, finally we have a well-researched, independent analysis of the data relating to terrorism, released last week by Canada's Simon Fraser University. Its findings will surprise you.
It explains that there is a reason you're scared. The U.S. government agency charged with tracking terrorist attacks, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), reported a 41 percent increase from 2005 to 2006 and then equally high levels in 2007. Another major, government-funded database of terrorism, the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terror (MIPT), says that the annual toll of fatalities from terrorism grew 450 percent (!) between 1998 and 2006. A third report, the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), also government-funded, recorded a 75 percent jump in 2004, the most recent year available for the data it uses.
The Simon Fraser study points out that all three of these data sets have a common problem. They count civilian casualties from the war in Iraq as deaths caused by terrorism. This makes no sense. Iraq is a war zone, and as in other war zones around the world, many of those killed are civilians. Study director Prof. Andrew Mack notes, "Over the past 30 years, civil wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Bosnia, Guatemala, and elsewhere have, like Iraq, been notorious for the number of civilians killed.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Yawn, whatever Fareeq..
The flip side of this argument is that the data provides the answer to the question “Are we safer because of (Iraq, the WOT, etc)”. Clearly, we are safer because by these metrics, we are winning.
Don’t get complacent though, ‘climate of fear’ is bs.
If the terrorists’ leadership has any brains for tactics and strategy they would call attack on the US off limits until after the election. Perhaps they have cooled attacks in the US since 2001 so that the Dems continue to divide this country and supposedly dampen our war effort. An attack would unite the American people and steel resolve, one would hope at least.
The Iraq war killed lots of terrorists who might have been active elsewhere in the world. Al Qaeda is losing people faster than they can recruit, and their quality is going down.
I think he’s saying that people of a certain political persuasion are dedicated to convincing us that it’s getting worse all the time. Then he shows how they skewed the data to get those results.
The Viet Cong had the same problem, particularly after the Tet Offensive, but the U.S. media won the war for them anyway.
Well, yes that is what he is saying. How did I miss that?
/s>
I don’t accept his conclusion.
Upon reading it more closely, I also dispute his characterization of government data. He says that there are no victims of terrorism mixed in the Iraq war figures. Tell that to the thousands of victims of suicide bombers. Are you now willing to call blowing one self up in a market an act of war? That is equivalent to our soldiers careful use of force? Guess we know where you are coming from.
There are also people of a certain political persuasion who are anxious for the American people to go back to sleep, to not be on guard. Those are the people who were celebrating the end of history while our soldiers were being blown up in Khobar tower, our sailors were being blown up on the USS Cole, our diplomats were being blown up in embassies in Kenya and our own citizens were being blown up in the first World Trade Center attack. And some of them are here acting on behalf our our enemies.
A founder of the Texas chapter of a highly influential U.S. Islamic lobby group was found guilty of supporting terrorism. Ghassan Elashi, along with two ...
www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43805
A federal jury in New York City has convicted veteran defense lawyer Lynne Stewart of providing material support to terrorists and other related charges.
www.adl.org/learn/extremism_in_the_news/Islamic_Te.
... finds Hamid Hayat guilty of supporting terrorism by attending a terrorist ... He was convicted on one count of supporting terrorism and three counts of lying ...
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5363
Apr 17, 2008 ... A Muslim preacher who heckled the home secretary is among six men convicted of supporting terrorism.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7352969.stm
Deny all you want — its a dangerous world out there.
I’m not denying anything. But he’s revealing the manipulation behind the propaganda drive to convince us that Bush has made things worse by going into Iraq.
I read it the other way. When Democrats speak of ‘climate of fear’, they are calling Republicans paranoid and politially manpulative in the worst way - using national defense for political gain.
Recall Jimmy Carter’s ‘inordinate fear of Communism’, and this week Obama saying Iran is not a threat :
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/05/obama_tells_75000_oregonians_i.html
If he reveals the manipulation, he reveals it inadvertently.
"In the only other independent analysis of terrorism data, the U.S.-based IntelCenter published a study in mid-2007 that examined "significant" attacks launched by Al Qaeda over the past 10 years.
"It came to the conclusion that the number of Islamist attacks had declined 65 percent from a high point in 2004, and fatalities from such attacks had declined by 90 percent.
"The Simon Fraser study notes that the decline in terrorism appears to be caused by many factors, among them successful counterterrorism operations in dozens of countries and infighting among terror groups.
"But the most significant, in the study's view, is the "extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years."
"These are largely self-inflicted wounds. The more people are exposed to the jihadists' tactics and world view, the less they support them.
"An ABC/BBC poll in Afghanistan in 2007 showed support for the jihadist militants in the country to be 1 percent. In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, where Al Qaeda has bases, support for Osama bin Laden plummeted from 70 percent in August 2007 to 4 percent in January 2008. "
Of course, I agree with those who say Newsweek is not to be trusted with ANYTHING they say, but I find it hard to discount this particular report.
The fact that it’s the MSM that keeps up the drumbeat of “worse than ever!” tells me it’s all about convincing the public that Bush has “created more terrorists” with his “illegal war” which is “not working anyway.” If the terrorism level goes down, it means Bush did the right thing, and the surge is working. We all know the MSM doesn’t want anyone thinking THAT.
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