davad70

Join Date 03/2001

How's The War On Terror Going?

The Numbers Don't Lie

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A few days ago, Karl Rove offered a preview Linkof what will be the GOP's primary issue of focus in the 2006 elections; National Security.

Bush and his cabal insist that the way the administration has prosecuted the War on Terrorism has made the world is a safer place. The whole point of "winning" the war is to decrease the number of terrorism worldwide. Yet look at this chart tracking the number of terrorism incidents, domestic and international, since 2003 (the year we invaded Iraq):

The number of terrorist attacks has steadily increased under Bush's leadership. As ericbrewer points out, based on the terrorist database, "the sum of "international" and "domestic" terrorist attacks in 2005 was 3991, up 51% from the previous year's figure of 2639. The number of deaths that resulted from those attacks was 6872, which is 36% higher than the 5066 that occurred in 2004."

So we know that terrorism has increased dramatically under the Bush presidency. But surely, we must be making some progress on the War on Terrorism? The PATRIOT ACT, taking off our shoes at the airport, the Department of Homeland Security--all of that has to have a major impact in reigning in the terrorists, right? Well, not quite. Let's take a look at the numbers.

In 2002, the Bush administration boasted that it prosecuted some 62 cases of international terrorism. The reality? 60 of the 62 "international terrorists" turned out to be Middle Eastern students who had cheated on an English proficiency exam.Link The only other case considered "terrorism" in the traditional sense was that of Daniel Pearle's killer.

Last year, in the summer of 2005, the Bush administration claimed it had prosecuted "over 400" terrorists. But a Washinton Post investigation Link revealed that was an outright lie: only some 36 individuals were actually prosecuted under the terrorism law. The vast majority of convictions cited by the government as successes in the war on terrorism were actually "relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law -- and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows. For the entire list, the median sentence was just 11 months." (For a chart breaking down Bush's "400" convictions by crime, click here Link).

So we're obviously not making stellar headway on the judicial front in the War on Terror. How about the military front? McClellan claimed as recently as yesterday Linkthat we have captured or killed 3/4 of Al Qaeda's leadership.

First, the claim is implicitly ludicrous because it presumes we have a firm figure on the size of Al Qaeda, much less the number of leaders it has. But last year, American Prospect ran down the real numbers:Link

On October 10, 2001, the administration announced a most-wanted list of 22 suspected terrorists, headed by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atef, along with 18 other individuals, most of them affiliated with al-Qaeda. On May 26, 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller asked the American public to help find seven suspected al-Qaeda members potentially in the United States. Two of these seven had appeared on the original list of 22. All told, therefore, official U.S. government Web sites since September 11 have listed 27 known terrorists.

So how many have been captured or killed? Three.

That's not 75%, that's a paltry 11%. Mind you, the list at the time didn't even include powerful terrorists Mullah Omar and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But what do we expect from a Commander-in-Chief who repeatedly admitted he wasn't that concernedLink with the man who murdered thousands of innocents on American soil.

This Republican government has failed miserably in responding to the 9/11 attacks. Instead of bringing the perpetrators of the crime to justice, this GOP administration has instead embarked on a bloated, ill-focused, haphazard game of Risk which has no end, and no winner.

We are just as vulnerable to attack todayLink as we were that ill-fated Tuesday morning four years ago. Indeed, one can argue we're more vulnerable to attack, since we now exist in a hyper-charged environment where every failed missle attack spawns thousands of jihadists, Linkwhere every leashed prisoner turns more against us, and where everyone can spot our weaknesses but our leaders themselves.

A campaign issue in 2006? Bring. It. On.

Most of the information in this post comes from DailyKos or the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge base.

About MIPT;

The MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Basesm (TKBsm) is the one-stop resource for comprehensive research and analysis on global terrorist incidents, terrorism-related court cases, and terrorist groups and leaders. TKB covers the history, affiliations, locations, and tactics of terrorist groups operating across the world, with over 35 years of terrorism incident data and hundreds of group and leader profiles and trials. TKB also features interactive maps, statistical summaries, and analytical tools that can create custom graphs and tables. Link

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JillUser

Join Date 11/2003

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"This Republican government has failed miserably in responding to the 9/11 attacks. Instead of bringing the perpetrators of the crime to justice, this GOP administration has instead embarked on a bloated, ill-focused, haphazard game of Risk which has no end, and no winner."

Well, I am pretty pleased that there hasn't been a terrorist attack in the US since 9/11. Iraq is no longer under the grip of Saddam and had a successful democratic election. If democracy spreads throughout that region of the world, everyone will be a winner.

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I'm pleased that there hasn't been another attack like 9/11 too. However, I don't think it can really be shown that this is the result of anything that the administration has done. Well, there was a crackpot they caught who thought he was going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a jackhammer. Thank God they caught him!

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If democracy spreads throughout that region of the world, everyone will be a winner

I don't know that families of the 6,872 people who died last year would agree with you.

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"The whole point of "winning" the war is to decrease the number of terrorism worldwide."

Any credentials on that?

~Sarah

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Any credentials on that?

Nope, no credentials on that other than common sense. What would you say the point of the war on terror should be?

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Nope, no credentials on that other than common sense. What would you say the point of the war on terror should be?

I guess this could be one of the goals, but I think it's for 1) The US's protection from Iraqi terrorists and 2) Protect and create reasonable government for Iraqi citizens. I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with you, just wondering if you got it from somewhere else or what.

~Sarah

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Here is another relevant story;

Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report

By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism."

But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.

"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.

Link

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It has it's ups and downs, but all-in-all it's going pretty well...

btw, how's the "war on poverty" going? ;~D

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