The Government Exaggerates Terrorism Statistics
It seems that Congressman Chris Cannon isn’t the only one in our government who is making up facts about crimes in our country in an effort to artificially increase our fear of terrorism. The inspector general of the Justice Department has reported that the DOJ and FBI have been fudging the data on reported terrorism cases.
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Not only does the government inflate terrorist incidents to make us think it is doing a good job when they are wasting billions of dollars, Bruce Schneier argues that the real point of homeland security is not to protect people, but to protect politicians in the event of another terrorist attack. He writes:
Since 9/11, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars defending ourselves from terrorist attacks. Stories about the ineffectiveness of many of these security measures are common, but less so are discussions of why they are so ineffective. In short: much of our country’s counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from criticism when another attack occurs.
A perfect example is Boston’s ridiculous response to Cartoon Network’s guerrilla marking campaign.
Schneier’s article is here: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1.html
Comment by Daniel — February 23, 2007 @ 6:56 am
Since the article provides no facts, its difficult to know either way, but my own analysis of several incidents, many with clearly expressed Jihadist animus, indicates that rather than tagging everything as a terror incident, the government is bending over backwards to characterize it as “routine” mass murder.
We don’t have an iota of fact for Talovic’s motives, but the media have simply dismissed out of hand that Suleiman was acting on Jihadist impulses. Government agencies have no rushed forth to disabuse them either.
Having said that, I think DHS will inevitably spin any event to their benefit–whether that’s mischaracterizing something as terrorism, or sweeping real terrorism under the rug. I was against the formation of this ponderous beast in the first place.
…and yes, Chris Cannon is an embarrassment.
Comment by Mick Stockinger — March 5, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
Fair enough Mick but I still think an eagerness to jump to the conclusion that any crime perpetrated by a Muslim is related to terrorism is in our best interests.
Comment by Jeremy Manning — March 6, 2007 @ 10:21 am