On the occasion of my 1000th post, I thought about the subject matter I would write about for days. The deteriorating conditions in Iraq, the fraudulent abuses of KBR and other contractors, the anniversary of 9/11, the ABC right wing fantasy movie, the erosion of support for the GOP...all interesting and deserving of critical analysis but none peaked my interest or got my investigative juices flowing.
This morning, I read an article at the Huffington Post about the favorite new catch phrase of the right, 5 years later and no attacks, i.e. Bush has made us safer.
This red herring, which has been flopped out time and time again by the right wing echo chamber, turns out to be so completely, absolutely and undeniable false as to insult the intellect of anyone repeating it or believing it.
If we look back honestly at history, as the myth of a documentary recently aired on Disney/ABC failed to do, we find that the period we find ourselves living in under Republican rule is the most violent and turbulent in the last 50 years.
During Bill Clinton's presidency (as in every modern presidency) there were a few terrorists acts which shocked the world. Barely one month into his first term, the World Trade Towers were bombed (an act for which the right wing placed full responsibility on Clinton's shoulders). The perpetrators were rounded up (legally and without a 300 billion dollar endless war), prosecuted, and given life sentences. That was in 1993. There were no more successful terrorist attacks in the United States during the rest of Bill Clinton's term. That makes 8 1/2 years without a Islamic extremist attack on U.S. soil. During the remainder of his terms in office, Clinton made fighting terrorism a top priority and funded anti-terrorism to the tune of $400 million dollars with which federal law enforcement agencies broke up and interrupted several terrorist plots before they could be carried out (again using legal means and no secret courts, indefinite detentions, or Constitutional violations of spying on the American public).
There were bombings at the African Embassy, Saudi Arabian Khobar Towers and the attack on the USS Cole, events utilized by the right to politicize the events and blame the Clinton administration.
The American death toll for these terrorist attacks under President Clinton was approximately 27. Other Nationalities suffered death tolls of 300 (mostly African civilians in the Embassy bombings where 235 were killed). Another 5372 were injured in the attacks. Any loss of life from terrorist attacks is unacceptable and the right wing mobilized their entire media contingency to bash Clinton after each attack as a failure for letting these events happen "under his watch".
We fast forward to September 11, 2001 when President George W. Bush, who had been in office for nearly 8 months, sat in a Florida classroom reading a book about a pet goat while our country was under attack by terrorists. Bush, who would use this day of tragedy for his own personal political benefit from this point forward, sat for 7 minutes after he had been told we were under attack and did nothing.
In hindsight, that was preferable to what he was about to do with the power a frightened American public and cowed opposition party would give him in the immediate aftermath.
On that day, 2973 Americans died as a result of the worst terrorist attack committed on American soil on George W. Bush's watch with thousands more injured. The main perpetrator of the attacks, Osama bin Laden, has never been caught, killed or captured contrary to the old west style boasts of President Bush.
A week later, envelopes containing Anthrax were mailed to several U. S. media offices and two U. S. Senators (Both Democrats). 5 Americans died and 11 were seriously injured. No perpetrator has ever been caught.
The cocksure President who has crowed over and over about making us safer has failed to do so. He has also made the world a much more dangerous place. Using the federal government's own terrorist tracking figures, we can see a dramatic tragic increase in terrorist attacks worldwide since President Bush's war on terror has begun.
Since Bush has been given (or taken) near unlimited power to fight his "war on terra", there have been an unprecedented number of increasingly effective terrorist attacks, not only in unstable third world countries, but also modernized democracies.
The Bali bombings On October 12, 2002 killed 202 people and injured 209 was the worst terrorist attack ever in the country of Indonesia.
The bombings in Madrid Spain on March the 11th 2004, killed 191 people and wounded over 1700 and was the worst terrorist attack ever to hit Spain.
London England experienced it's worst terrorist attack on July 7, 2005 when multiple bombings on the subway system and a double decker bus resulted in the deaths of 52 and the injury of over 700.
Using the Bush Administrations own data regarding terrorist attacks worldwide provided by the National Counterterrorism Center, there have been an exponentially increasing number of terrorist attacks since Bush has taken office. Searching their database of terrorist incidents which have taken place since January 1, 2004 (Less than 3 years of data, which does not include the 9/11 attacks or the other attacks mentioned above), there have been 14,278 (FOURTEEN THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT) terrorist incidents worldwide resulting in 22,319 deaths and 43,620 injuries and 40,866 hostages for a grand total of 106,805 victims of terrorist attacks.
The number of terrorist attacks has been increasing steadily since Bush was elected but are especially shocking in the data from 2004 and 2005 (the only years the NCTC has figures posted for). The number of attacks increase nearly 200% from 2004 to 2005 and the limited data available shows that 2006 will be even more turbulent and violent than 2005.
2004 -
Terrorist Incidents - 3168
Fatalities - 7717
Injuries - 18,865
Hostages - 6086
Total Victims - 32668
2005 -
Terrorist Incidents - 11,110
Fatalities - 14,602
Injuries - 24,755
Hostages - 34,780
Total Victims - 74,137
For some reason, the National Conterterrorism Center stopped posting data for 2006. I wonder why?
I don't know if these figures include the 2671 military personnel who have been killed in Iraq or the nearly 20,000 that have been seriously injured.
The Bush administration has not made the world safer but they have attempted to manipulate and remove data to lie about the horrible increase in terrorist activity. The State Department, under orders from Condaleeza Rice, killed a public website and has witheld data on terrorist attacks because the data contradicted the much boasted Bush team claims that they are winning the war on terror.
The fact is that each year under Bush's leadership(?), terrorists have become more brazen in their attacks and have obtained a limitless supply of martyrs who are inspired by the actions and rhetoric of this administration to do harm to people across the globe.
Osama bin Laden can is indebted to George W. Bush, not only for his daily freedom (now 5 years and 1 day post 9/11) and life, but also, for doing what bin Laden himself couldn't; mobilizing and energizing Muslim extremists to take up arms against America and the rest of the world. George W. Bush has become a deadly parody of the World War II recruitment poster featuring a stern Uncle Sam pointing and saying, "I Want You!", but Bush is recruiting for the other side and is achieving an extremely rare success albeit a sadly ironic one.
I am sure Mr. bin Laden would be willing to cut a campaign commercial for the Republican candidates running on his platform of fear, after all bin Laden invented it but right wing Republicans perfected it.
The Republican's only message is be afraid and thanks to their actions, we should be, but only if we let them continue their failed policies and actions.
Links used for this article:
http://www.nctc.gov /
http://icasualties.org/oif /
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/41274 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-American_terr... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_attacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_U.S._embassy_bombings
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