Terrorism As You Know It Doesn't Exist

Headline: STATE DEPARTMENT STILL SEARCHING FOR USAMA BIN LADEN - U.S. Intelligence tracking vowel movements of the worst enemy the U.S. has had since Darth Vader.
by Phillip Bunker

I found out recently that the U.S. military has a new ally in the War On Terror: Explorer Scouts being trained by the F.B.I. With plastic assault rifles, you too can send your kid to train with the F.B.I. and U.S. Border Patrol, and if you're lucky your child will discover the true rush of engaging terrorists, perhaps giving them a taste of what how exciting war can really be (satire).

Since this program is further evidence of the threat posed to the U.S. by terrorists (sarcasm), I thought I'd check up on terrorist facts in the United States using official sources and I discovered two very unusual things.

First, the State Department web site that lists all the significant terrorist events from 1961-2003 and Islam just isn't the biggest problem. I figured any terrorist strike on U.S. soil committed by foreign nationals or organizations would be listed. Islamic-based terrorism is the "threat" everyone talks about, so there should be evidence that terrorism comes from the middle East. So, first I searched for the word Islam. Only one instance of terrorism committed on U.S. soil and attributed to an Islamist group showed up:

World Trade Center Bombing, February 26, 1993: The World Trade Center in New York City was badly damaged when a car bomb planted by Islamic terrorists exploded in an underground garage. The bomb left 6 people dead and 1,000 injured. The men carrying out the attack were followers of Umar Abd al-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric who preached in the New York City area.

The next entry for terrorism that occurred on U.S. soil was that thing that happened on my Wedding Anniversary:

Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Homeland, September 11, 2001: Two hijacked airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Soon thereafter, the Pentagon was struck by a third hijacked plane. A fourth hijacked plane, suspected to be bound for a high-profile target in Washington, crashed into a field in southern Pennsylvania. The attacks killed 3,025 U.S. citizens and other nationals. President Bush and Cabinet officials indicated that Usama Bin Laden was the prime suspect and that they considered the United States in a state of war with international terrorism. In the aftermath of the attacks, the United States formed the Global Coalition Against Terrorism.

At first I thought, "wow, no wonder the U.S. military can't capture Osama, they've got the wrong spelling of his name." But, with a little more research, I found out that the U.S. media is the only group to use the spelling Osama. Most government agencies use the spelling Usama.

You may also notice that the title of the entry with the word Homeland in it. So first of all, I get it that you can't call it the "World Trade Center Planing." Second, I'll just say that the terrorists apparently didn't strike several selected sites in the U.S., but infact struck the Homeland of the U.S. The only other person I can think of that used that kind of rhetoric was Hitler. He also convinced the people that the French occupation of the Rhineland wasn't just a threat to strategic interests in the area, but that the Homeland was in danger from foreigners. New York is not my homeland, and if Islamic terrorists had anything to do with the planning and orchestration of 9/11 I'll eat my hat (but that's a whole other story). Oddly enough, the State Department web site doesn't mention Iraq, Islam, or even Al Queda as being responsible - nor do they quote the 9/11 commission report. Instead the entry states merely that Bush and Cabinet Officials indicated that Usama did it. Well, terrorism is as terrorism does, and it's a really good thing that the U.S. gets to decide what terrorism is, considering how much terrorism it does.

So, that's the second thing I found: there's afew terrorist incidents every year, sometimes a few more, and all but four occurred off U.S. soil from 1961-2003 (I don't know why the list ends there - is there a waiting period for the government to report official acts of terrorism, and is that waiting period no less than six years?). Of the four that did occur, one was Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (right-wingers who must have hated Islam too), one was attributed to Islamic Jihadists (first World Trade Center bombing), one was attributed to Usama (as an assertion made by Bush with, to my knowledge, no credible proof), and the last was the mysterious Anthrax mailings - an unsolved, unclaimed, and unsubstantiated attack (unless you count Tom Daschle, John Ashcroft, television networks, and the F.B.I. as substantiation).

Anthrax Attacks, October-November 2001: On October 7 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that investigators had detected evidence that the deadly anthrax bacterium was present in the building where a Florida man who died of anthrax on October 5 had worked. Discovery of a second anthrax case triggered a major investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The two anthrax cases were the first to appear in the United States in 25 years. Anthrax subsequently appeared in mail received by television networks in New York and by the offices in Washington of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and other members of Congress. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a briefing on October 16, "When people send anthrax through the mail to hurt people and invoke terror, it’s a terrorist act."

Conclusion: Without crunching numbers, my research indicates that you are only likely to personally encounter a terrorist attack carried out by a foreign person if: i) you travel to (in rough order of likelihood of encountering terrorism) Columbia, Isreal, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, or Uganda, and maybe London depending on how the I.R.A. is feeling; ii) you assume dark skinned terrorists are lurking near your home (the operative part of Homeland) and treat the world accordingly - enough of us making this assumption will cause it to be true, since the world is literally what we make of it. As an example: sending drones all over the world to explode the houses of "terrorists" will eventually cause drones to send explosives back at us. Every foreign person killed by the U.S. military is considered an act of terror by someone, and if we kill too many, then we'll be in the minority - especially if we don't control all the money anymore.

Solution: Assume the media spins things so much that they border on lies of omission, and spend as much time finding your own answers with primary and factual based sources as you can. Let's not leave the media, the government, and the banks to do all the truth interpreting for us. Take back the government; the first step is making sure all your friends vote. Good luck to us all.

ps: watch "Zeitgeist, The Movie" even if you don't agree, at least you thought outside the box a little.