Keystone Kops

There were nearly 3,200 terrorist attacks worldwide last year, a federal counterterrorism center said yesterday, using a broader definition that increased fivefold the number of attacks the agency had been counting.

The National Counterterrorism Center's interim director, John Brennan, called a new database that was to go online today "the most comprehensive U.S. effort to date to track terrorist incidents worldwide." But he cautioned that comparing the new tally to previous ones was comparing apples to oranges.

The "apples and oranges" plea is complete bullshit, as this blog has argued before now: just apply the new methodology to previous years' events, and we'd be able to easily track the trend. But the Bush Administration can't do that, because it would demonstrate that its methods are having the opposite affect to their supposed intent.

But even the news of the day, without the historical context, amply demonstrates either the Administration's incompetence, or its lies regarding its intentions.

First stop, Arabia:

Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's June 25-26 unscheduled trip to Arabia has raised many an eyebrow in Islamabad's diplomatic circles, where it is believed the visit was meant to seek the assistance of the kingdom to circumvent the ongoing International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigations into reports that the Saudis might have purchased nuclear technology from Pakistan.

So while the Bush Administration is busy "spreading freedom" in Iraq, and possibly getting ready for same in Iran; its closest "War-On-Terror" ally is busy spreading nuclear technology right next door. Well, at least we've long-since abandoned the WMD pretexts for the Bushwars.

But for those scoring at home, that makes North Korea, Iran, Arabia, and Brazil that have since the launching of the "GWOT" either acquired the bomb or are thought to be awfully close to having done so. You know, there must have been a less dangerous means of accomplishing the goal of redirecting U.S. tax dollars into Dick Cheney's pockets.

Next stop, Afghanistan:

Q: General, if you could take a step back and provide a little bit of context on Afghanistan. Do you see the situation deteriorating? Is it deteriorating, in particular in Kunar Province? Could you give us a little bit of context for this?

GEN. CONWAY: I would actually say the opposite. You know, our intelligence folks were predicting in January, in the middle of winter, that this heaviest of snowfalls in some time is going to melt and go away; that they will come out of the caves, and there will be a spring resurgence, if you will, leading up to the election that we see now in September. So all of this is along a very predictable path.

So the Administration has known since January that there would be a "spring resurgence", yet is completely unable to prevent it? As we've asked here many times before: is the general trying to inspire confidence in his military's ability to prevent violence?

And if, as Scottie is so fond of pontificating to the effect of, increasing violence in Afghanistan and Iraq is a sign that the Administration is "succeeding" in its mission of bringing "freedom" to those lands, does it not logically follow that "freedom" and security are inversely related? That the maximum "level" of "freedom" will be coincident with the maximum level of violence? And if the Administration is, by its own admission, utterly powerless to alter this relationship, shouldn't it maybe turn the reins over to somebody else?

MR. DI RITA: But I will note -- to just kind of follow on your first question, but it's relevant to yours, too, Charlie, and that is General Abizaid, at the testimony the other day, acknowledged that his anticipation is that they're going to throw everything they can -- meaning the bad guys -- at the election in September. So it's just -- it's a window on his own thinking, but he has not -- I mean, there will be additional forces available, if he says he needs them.

Funny thing about "everything": it seems it be rather in plentiful supply, even after having been thrown.

Next stop, the "Homeland":

A new Pentagon strategy for securing the U.S. homeland calls for expanded military activity not only in the air and sea -- where the armed forces have historically guarded approaches to the country -- but also on the ground and in other less traditional, potentially more problematic areas such as intelligence sharing with civilian law enforcement. [...]

The document does not ask for new legal authority to use military forces on U.S. soil, but it raises the likelihood that U.S. combat troops will take action in the event that civilian and National Guard forces are overwhelmed. At the same time, the document stresses that the primary responsibility for domestic security continues to rest with civilian agencies.

Again, doesn't exactly inspire confidence, does it? The Administration is doing such a bang-up job of "fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here" that it's worried about the National Guard being "overwhelmed".

And yet, Bush's "leadership" of the "War On Terror" is the one component of his poll ratings that has retained its lofty image in the public imagination. It's a crazy, fucked-up World, it is.

Update, 7/7/05: Next stop, London:

British authorities were apparently aware of the presence of suspected al-Qaeda sleeper cells in the Muslim diaspora in the UK, and had been closely monitoring their activities for nearly a year. The fact that despite this, the perpetrators of the blasts managed to carry them out speak well of their motivation and ability to plan and execute terrorist strikes in total secrecy.

It also speaks well to the futility of trying to maintain a global empire by violence. Which is not to say that Thursday's bombings were not deplorable acts. But they were no less deplorable, and incalculably less devastating (incalculably because the "Multinational Force" "doesn't do body-counts", and because the full impact of the United States' toxic weaponry will be felt over the course of decades) than, for example, the blitz of Fallujah (to take just one out of the panoply crimes perpetrated by the "liberators" in Iraq and Afghanistan).

You'd never know that reading the third in a five-part series of Seattle Times editorials (concluding, coincidentally, to-day) "criticising" the U.S. presence in Iraq:

With 1,731 U.S. troops killed and more than 13,000 wounded, the human toll from the war in Iraq is painfully apparent. [...]

It is time to face this reality: The lives and dollars paying for the war are coming from America.

Compare this analysis with Tony Blair's:

I think we all know what they are trying to do -- they are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cower us, to frighten us out of doing the things that we want to do, of trying to stop us going about our business as normal, as we are entitled to do, and they should not, and they must not, succeed.

Got that? If we "want" to help the Big Dog invade your country and slaughter 100,000 people, while maiming and torturing god-knows how many others; then we are "entitled" to do so. Given British history, it's no great wonder that Blair should think so.

But if the course of our "going about our business as normal" necessitates the creation of the "normal" conditions seen in the Third World to-day, Blair's rhetoric is no more than a "damp squib". Here's hoping the British will follow the Spaniards' lead, and compel their government to pull out of the "coalition" -- not because they fear more bomb-blasts in their future, but because they've finally connected the dots between their "business as normal" and others' "business as normal":

Don't Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists otherwise known as "Abroad" was home to the first civilizations and is home now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region?

Don't Americans realize that "abroad" is a country full of people -- men, women, and children who are dying hourly? "Abroad" is home for millions of us. It's the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our children -- your field of war and terror.

The war was brought to us here, and now we have to watch the country disintegrate before our very eyes. We watch as towns are bombed and gunned down and evacuated of their people. We watch as friends and loved ones are detained, or killed or pressured out of the country with fear and intimidation. [...]

Three decades of tyranny isn't what bombed and burned buildings to the ground. It isn't three decades of tyranny that destroyed the infrastructure with such things as "Shock and Awe" and various other tactics. Though [Bush] fails to mention it, prior to the war, we didn't have sewage overflowing in the streets like we do now, and water cut off for days and days at a time. We certainly had more than the 8 hours of electricity daily. In several areas they aren't even getting that much. [...]

We're so "free", we often find ourselves prisoners of our homes, with roads cut off indefinitely and complete areas made inaccessible. We are so "free" to assemble that people now fear having gatherings because a large number of friends or family members may attract too much attention and provoke a raid by American or Iraqi forces. [...]

Why aren't the Americans setting a timetable for withdrawal? Iraqis are constantly wondering why nothing is being done to accelerate the end of the occupation.

Posted by Eddie Tews at July 6, 2005 06:38 PM