Wait!!! World terrorism has DROPPED over the last 5 years

[NeoV]

If Iraq was part of the war on terror - why would you ignore it if you are counting terrorist acts?

 

[Double Trouble]

In fact, in my recent study where I went ahead and excluded all countries where terrorism actually occurred, I found that terrorism has declined 100% over the last 5 years! Yay!

 

[TechAZ]

Originally posted by: CallMeJoe
Do we count the 15 Adamiya Awakening Council members killed in Baghdad as victims of Terrorism? They are believed killed by Al Qaeda, but it happened in Iraq (which would exclude them under ProfJohn's arbitrary rules).

Considering the report was non Iraq terrorism....I'm taking a good guess that Iraqi related terrorism is not part of the equation.

Believe it or not, there was terrorism happening all around the world before....so far, not so much. Even before Bush was in office, hard to believe I know, but true! I know, I know...the US is responsible for everything bad that happens. If not the US then certainly Bush!

 

[umbrella39]

So correlation = causation here then?

 

[CallMeJoe]

Originally posted by: TechAZ
Considering the report was non Iraq terrorism....I'm taking a good guess that Iraqi related terrorism is not part of the equation.

ProfJohn postulates that we are winning the War on Terror, because non-Iraq terror fatalities are declining. I find it arbitrary to exclude non-sectarian homicides in Iraq from the statistics, especially since the Bush administration has made Iraq the center of terrorist activity.

Believe it or not, there was terrorism happening all around the world before....so far, not so much. Even before Bush was in office, hard to believe I know, but true! I know, I know...the US is responsible for everything bad that happens. If not the US then certainly Bush!

Strawman Argument. I have never blamed the United States or George W. Bush for inventing or inspiring the invention of terrorism.

edit: syntax

 

[ProfJohn]

IMO the thing to take away from this story is the fact that terrorism outside of Iraq has been going down the last few years.

That is good news.

 

[CallMeJoe]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
IMO the thing to take away from this story is the fact that terrorism outside of Iraq has been going down the last few years.
That is good news.

It would be even better news if terrorist homicides were declining everywhere.

 

[Martin]

In related news, we have achieved immortality (once we stop counting all the dead people)


No wonder there are polls showing a higher satisfaction with life amongst conservatives. It must be quite pleasant to live in a fairy-tale world unencumbered by reality.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Garbage in, garbage out. Hay! Turn off the oven , the books are cooked!

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I swear people on here either don't read or don't understand what they are reading.

The figures that claim terrorism has gone up dramaticly in the last 4 years in include the Iraqis killed in their civil war.

But they don't include the people killed in Dufar or Rwanda etc etc.

If you included the number of people killed in Dufar and Rwanda in terrorism totals then the numbers from the late 90s and early 00s would go up and you would therefore see a drop in deaths via terrorism in recent years.

More importantly while terror related deaths in Iraq have spiked, terror related deaths in other parts of the world have dropped.

AQ is on the run and losing support and Islamic fundamentalists are moving away from violence. All of that is good news.

I like what you did there. I'm sure it's not original, but I've somehow not noticed that we're now defining that nasty business in Iraq as a civil war.

 

[ProfJohn]

It's all original.

Why do so many people assume everyone is just cut and pasting their opinions??

 

[jman19]

Originally posted by: Fern

Originally posted by: eskimospy
-snip-
And again, 'credit' to Bush for lowering worldwide terrorism only works if you ignore the place where the vast majority of terrorism takes place right now. Sorry if I don't get too excited.

Gee, you sound as if you believe *fighting them over their so we don't have to fight them here* thingy is working?



Fern

That doesn't follow at all, actually. Just because there are more in Iraq doesn't mean those people were ever going to be *here*. Nice try tho

 

[First]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Remove Iraq from the totals and...

rofl.

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I think it is safe to say we are winning the war on terror and things should only get better.
link

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. That dramatic drop was probably a reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but it points to a general trend in Pakistan over the past five years. With every new terrorist attack, public support for jihad falls.

Way to distort a report.

You imply that the "war on terror" is the major reason terrorism is dropping. The report concludes something quite different.

 

[Stoneburner]

Originally posted by: shira

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I think it is safe to say we are winning the war on terror and things should only get better.
link

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. That dramatic drop was probably a reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but it points to a general trend in Pakistan over the past five years. With every new terrorist attack, public support for jihad falls.

Way to distort a report.

You imply that the "war on terror" is the major reason terrorism is dropping. The report concludes something quite different.

Zakaria seems to be saying terrorism is self defeating

Which means ProfJohn's mancrush just spent a trillion dollars on nothing.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Give the terrorists a new favorite place to muster, say Iraq for instance, and then don't count Iraq in the new stats. Brilliant!

Try telling the IRS that, statistically, the money in that offshore account doesn't count.

And the "fight them there, not here" argument is pretty flimsy. We have just supplied them with with a time sensitive opportunity for recruitment and training which they are taking advantage of. I'm sure they haven't forgotten how much they'd like to blow stuff up here. It's just temporarily not the first order of business. But it will be again.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
IMO the thing to take away from this story is the fact that terrorism outside of Iraq has been going down the last few years.

That is good news.

So if we get all the terrorists to move to the US and kill people there we can say that, with the exclusion of the US, terrorism worldwide will have stopped alltogether! That's a great idea!

 

[Colt45]

If you remove Detroit from the totals, violent crime decreased in Michigan.

 

[cyclohexane]

Originally posted by: Colt45
If you remove Detroit from the totals, violent crime decreased in Michigan.

qft

 

[RightIsWrong]

Hey...this is fun and I want in on it.

If you take away all of the money that we owe to other countries....the deficit is almost zero!

 

[winnar111]

Originally posted by: eskimospy
Why would you remove Iraq from the list of world terrorism? You can complain that other deaths should be attributable to terrorism in other countries and that they are not counted, but it's simply a ridiculous idea to take the place that terrorist organizations have been pouring resources into and pretend it doesn't exist to show how wonderful things have gotten.

We Fight Them Over There So We Don?t Have To Fight Them Over Here.

 

[NeoV]

But even if the figures from Iraq are excluded some analysts say terrorist attacks are still more prevalent and more deadly than they've been in the past.

David Wright-Neville is an associate professor at the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash University.

"That stands in stark contrast to a number of other studies," he said.

"For example, there was a study released last year by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruikshank that shows that terrorism since the invasion of Iraq has gone up over 600 per cent around the world.

"And in fact if we take out Iraq and Afghanistan from those figures, it's still gone up significantly on average I think around about 12 per cent per year."

 

[lupi]

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: TechAZ

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Even assuming your speculation is correct (which it isn't) all we've had to do to lower terrorism by 40% is to kill 100,000 innocent Iraqis.

Mission accomplished!

:roll:

Prove that it isn't correct

Annnnnd proof there we killed 100k innocent Iraqis dead. Key word on innocent, and emphasis on "we killed".

Watch this thread turn into damnation and spin and hatred for evil Bush. Instead of actually giving credit where credit is due.

What the hell are you talking about? According to Iraqbodycount.org the minimum number of people that have died in Iraq as a result of our invasion is about 85,000. They use one of the most conservative methods possible for estimating deaths, so... yeah. So what if we didn't kill them all personally? We created circumstances that directly lead to these deaths.

And again, 'credit' to Bush for lowering worldwide terrorism only works if you ignore the place where the vast majority of terrorism takes place right now. Sorry if I don't get too excited.

Then I guess the US, UK, France, and all the other signatory nations at versailles are responsible for the deaths of several million people.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: lupi

Originally posted by: eskimospy

What the hell are you talking about? According to Iraqbodycount.org the minimum number of people that have died in Iraq as a result of our invasion is about 85,000. They use one of the most conservative methods possible for estimating deaths, so... yeah. So what if we didn't kill them all personally? We created circumstances that directly lead to these deaths.

And again, 'credit' to Bush for lowering worldwide terrorism only works if you ignore the place where the vast majority of terrorism takes place right now. Sorry if I don't get too excited.

Then I guess the US, UK, France, and all the other signatory nations at versailles are responsible for the deaths of several million people.

You can't really be stupid enough to think that signing a bad treaty and leading an armed invasion of a country are the same thing, can you?

 

[heyheybooboo]

About the National Counterterrorism Center

In August 2004, the President established the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to serve as the primary organization in the United States Government (USG) for integrating and analyzing all intelligence pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism

Gee. An inaccurate document politically manipulated by the Bush administration. Not a concept hard to grasp.

If you don't like the way the State Department's annual report on terrorism (the 'authoritative yardstick' of the prevalence of terrorist activity around the world) reflects upon your administration establish a new agency so that your Presidential library can rewrite history.

I'm shocked. Especially since the State Department was taken to task 3 years ago for underreporting the number of terrorist attacks worldwide.

Our good buddy Richard Armitage was behind that little snafu proclaiming, ?Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight.?

Pants on Fire! Pants on Fire!