Reuters reports:
A study released on Wednesday reports a decline in fatal attacks of terrorism worldwide and says U.S. think-tank data showing sharp increases were distorted due to the inclusion of killings in Iraq.
“Even if the Iraq ‘terrorism’ data are included, there has still been a substantial decline in the global terrorism toll,” said the 2007 Human Security Brief, an annual report funded by the governments of Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Britain.
***
“We have concluded that the expert consensus (on terrorism) is probably misleading,” Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Report Project, told a news conference.
No kidding. Longtime pw readers have known this from prior posts dating back to my very first guest-posts here in September 2006. The critics of the Bush Administration, inside and outside the establishment media have for years applied ever-shifting definitions of terrorism to advance their political agenda. They have used the statistics from the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and the US National Counterterrorism Center to argue that the war was increasing the global level of terrorism. Yet they have also characterized the sectarian violence within Iraq as a “civil war,” when that suited the politics of the moment. And the media is otherwise loathe to label groups inside Iraq as terrorist, preferring euphemisms like “militant” and “insurgent.”
Finally, a think tank like the Human Security Report Project has been able to show a wider audience that the way these statistics have been used have been distorting the public’s view of global trends in terrorism. Now more attention needs to be paid to those who did the distorting and their agendas in doing so.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
But they were so dead-on about how radical environmentalism would save the world. I’m gonna need a minute.
I was referring to the msm, of course. True to alppuccino form, “all of the words – none of the value”
Bravo, Karl. Haditha coverage would be a good place to start, I think.
Well, I thought for every terrorist we killed, two more were born. Maybe we just have to wait until they grow up?
Haditha “coverage” is pretty much of a misnomer, no?
Carin – 2? I thought it was 5. Either way, there should be about 817,938,716,361,482 baby Osama’s running around the Middle East about now.
I read somewhere that the terrorists’ O’ladies, position themselves near the suicide bombing, holding their vaginas open in an effort to catch a chunk of semen-laden Achmed-shrapnel for the purpose of lineage-perpetuation.
Well, I’m out of hyphens. Time for my meds.
Oh look at what the Community Organizer is reading:
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/archives2/019526.php
I think of them more as Chili Cheese Fritos®, myself.
Crispy and covered in cheese(-like) powder. I got no qualms with that. The “crispy” part, at least.