Posted on 09/20/2004 9:04:05 AM PDT by Area Freeper
Just what is the evidence for this alleged terrorist threat that now dominates foreign affairs and the presidential election?
The third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center has come and gone without any terrorist attacks in the United States. No terrorists attacked the Olympics in Greece, as so many feared. And the big statistical picture of terrorism has changed little in years.
Deaths because of terrorism worldwide have increased a bit lately (especially after the school attack in Russia), but the number still remains on the order of about a thousand deaths a year, according to the State Department - a small fraction of the 15,000 or so murders each year in the United States or the 40,000 who die in car accidents.
The Bush administration and many others interpret these facts as proof that the government is winning its "war on terror" (even though Osama bin Laden still roams free and threatens from afar).
And they may be right. It's conceivable that there would have been some attacks by now if not for the government's stepped-up security at home and its vigorous anti-terrorism efforts abroad. We don't know. We do know that studies of our statistical competency show both that we systematically overestimate the probability of vivid, high-profile threats such as shark bites and terrorist bombings and that we poorly estimate the probability of less glamorous dangers such as highway fatalities.
The comparative absence of terrorism could just as easily (and I believe, more reasonably) support the very different conclusion that we have overestimated - grossly overestimated - the terrorist threat. We may be "winning" a war against terrorism simply because there are few terrorists
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
They're letting the interns write editorials now?
What a load.
This writer is proof that man CAN mate with buffalo. Sheesh.
A member of Kerry's "kitchen cabinet"???
Bill OReily would like to comment on this little GEM, I'll bet. Do you here me Bill?
So deep, Forget the boots - save the watch!
Classic Democrat triangulation...
Except, of course, for the year of 2001 where the terrorist murders accounted for 20% of all murders in America. And the islamic terrorists want to make 9/11 look like a Sunday picnic in future attacks...
What I thought the threat of terrorism was worse now than before 9-11 and its all Bush's fault.
One person with a car full of homemade explosives.... can kill hundreds.
It isn't an overestimation when technology and modern chemistry act as force magnifiers for small terror operations.
The threat is biggest closest to the places where terrorists live and breed. Let's keep the threat as far away from our shores as possible.
Europe has been really lax about terrorism, and as such the threat to them is greater, because they are far more likely to have a greater number of cells operating within their countries.
The threat is there, it is real, and it is going to materialize sooner or later.
Thats the general idea with Afganistan and Iraq. They must be running short of virgins right about now.
If the President was a Democrat, they be singing him praises as our savior. No hint that GWB may be responsible for no new attacks on US soil. Spin and denial.
More to the point:
We may be "winning" a war against terrorism simply because there are fewer terrorists.
Remember Pearl Harbor
This needs a "9/10 thinking" barf alert!!
... and who'd a thunk: more people killed by swimming pool drownings than Al Qaeda terrorism in the last decade, so it's proof we need a War on Pools and ignore that terrorism.
Why is our security not of interest to the Left in America?
I wonder what this fellow thought the threat level was on Sept. 10.
Bali
Jakarta
Morocco
Spain
It hurts too much to continue.....
I assume most of the Freepers here know as the President does that the real money is being spent on making sure a nuclear weapon is not acquired and detonated here in the United States as an act of terrorism.
This effort will require massive expenditures in life and cash on military, intelligence and diplomatic approaches some more extreme then others.
He wants us to believe that it is September 10th.
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