How Do You Think The "War on Terror" is Going?? (page 3)

minimus

Well, I'M glad not everyone believes the war on terrorism is "shite".

darkuncle29

I'm not sure; am I supposed to whatch the billowing flames or the giant green curtain?

Looks like Bush is as effective as the "War on Terror" as he was at making money in biz.....

The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week.

Overall, the number of what the U.S. government considers "significant" attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the record of around 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides who were briefed on statistics covering incidents including the bloody school seizure in Russia and violence related to the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir.

Terrorist incidents in Iraq also dramatically increased, from 22 attacks to 198, or nine times the previous year's total -- a sensitive subset of the tally, given the Bush administration's assertion that the situation there had stabilized significantly after the U.S. handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government last summer.

The State Department announced last week that it was breaking with tradition in withholding the statistics on terrorist attacks from its congressionally mandated annual report. Critics said the move was designed to shield the government from questions about the success of its effort to combat terrorism by eliminating what amounted to the only year-to-year benchmark of progress.

Although the State Department said the data would still be made public by the new National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which prepares the information, officials at the center said no decision to publish the statistics has been made.

The controversy comes a year after the State Department retracted its annual terrorism report and admitted that its initial version vastly understated the number of incidents. That became an election-year issue, as Democrats said the Bush administration tried to inflate its success in curbing global terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Last year was bad. This year is worse. They are deliberately trying to withhold data because it shows that as far as the war on terrorism internationally, we're losing," said Larry C. Johnson, a former senior State Department counterterrorism official, who first revealed the decision not to publish the data.

Under the standards used by the government, "significant" terrorist attacks are defined as those that cause civilian casualties or fatalities or substantial damage to property. Attacks on uniformed military personnel such as the large number of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq are not included.

The data provided to the congressional aides also showed terrorist attacks doubling over the previous year in Afghanistan, to 27 significant incidents, and in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, where attacks rose to about 45, from 19 the year before. Also occurring last year were such deadly attacks as the seizure of a school in Beslan, Russia, by Chechen militants that resulted in at least 330 dead, and the Madrid train bombings that left nearly 200 dead.

The State Department did not disclose to the aides the overall number of those killed in incidents last year. Johnson said his count shows it was well over 1,000.

Mac

I'll still take the old Universal Pictures classics over the Wes Craven soup of the day drivel anytime!

mac

EvilForce

After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening devices to monitor the nation's ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate.

In its effort to create a virtual shield around America, the Department of Homeland Security now plans to spend billions of dollars more. Although some changes are being made because of technology that has emerged in the last couple of years, many of them are planned because devices currently in use have done little to improve the nation's security, according to a review of agency documents and interviews with federal officials and outside experts.

Among the problems:

¶Radiation monitors at ports and borders that cannot differentiate between radiation emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally occurring radiation from everyday material like cat litter or ceramic tile.

¶Air-monitoring equipment in major cities that is only marginally effective because not enough detectors were deployed and were sometimes not properly calibrated or installed. They also do not produce results for up to 36 hours - long after a biological attack would potentially infect thousands of people.

¶Passenger-screening equipment at airports that auditors have found is no more likely than before federal screeners took over to detect whether someone is trying to carry a weapon or a bomb aboard a plane.

¶Postal Service machines that test only a small percentage of mail and look for anthrax but no other biological agents.

EvilForce

Representatives of nearly 190 countries are currently meeting in New York to discuss ways of strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It's a shame that neither President Bush nor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice can find time to attend. Nuclear proliferation is the pre-eminent national security issue of our times. The nonproliferation treaty, signed in 1968, is the main reason John F. Kennedy's nightmare vision of 15 to 20 nuclear weapons states has been avoided. Instead, there are fewer than 10: the five that already had nuclear weapons when the treaty was signed, and Israel, India, Pakistan and probably North Korea, with Iran threatening to join that list in a few years' time.

Washington needs to lead the way in shoring up the basic bargain that underlies the treaty. The major nuclear weapons states committed themselves to reduce their own stockpiles significantly in exchange for nonnuclear states' renouncing the ambition of joining their ranks.

Demonstrating good faith on that score will not be so easy for an administration that has torn up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, frozen ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and talks darkly about designing new and improved nuclear bombs. But it is absolutely essential if nonnuclear countries are to stay committed to their side of the bargain. And whatever hope remains of walking back the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs is not helped by American talk of developing more usable nuclear weapons.

Plenty of good ideas and some not-so-good ones will be floating around the Nonproliferation Treaty review conference this month. But unless Washington brings high-level leadership to the table, the most important steps needed to keep other countries from following the paths of North Korea and Iran will not be taken.

Golf

As the late Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "Nothing happens by accident, if it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

It's not about us folks.

Golf

talesin

The War on Terror is going just about as well as the War on Drugs.

Next, they will be dropping leaflets over in Iraq that say "Just Say No to Terrorism".

Oh yeah, and where is Osama? That wily old rascally Saudi can sure wriggle himself out of some pretty tight situations, huh?

I agree with Golf.

tal

How Do You Think The "War on Terror" is Going??

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