Quantifying terror, how many will die stateside in a year?

Give the administration time.

Terrorism is routinely practiced in the United States against labor movements and most disadvantaged which includes many Veterans of the Imperialist wars wagered by entrenched wealth!

Few of you can comprehend because unlike me you've not grown up in an under privileged enviorment.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

It's dangerous to make assumptions about people of whom you know nothing.

Almost coming up on a year. Anyone rethink their fear yet?

Now you've been and gone and tempted providence...

Now, it's bad enough to fight a war, but I had no idea we were betting on the outcome! (ROFLMAO!)

Frolic points to the bigger issue here. The number of deaths does not make a terrorist insignificant or successful, for one thing. Please be reminded that Great Britain wrote off the American colonial freedom-fighters as terrorists, and their guerilla tactics against conventional stand and shoot policies carved out a great freedom for a great people. Also please be reminded that the terrorists in the Middle East have been fighting for their own freedom from their own oppressive leaders for some time now.

I think a better poll here would be how many deaths will the terrrorizing freedom-fighters in the Middle East inflict upon their leaders ignoring them before their leaders start allowing for freedoms instead of psuedo-Islamic oppression. Americans are their real enemy, just those Americans doing business with their corrupted leaders getting filthy rich from that business. America is only part of the problem over there, and attacking us here isn't the best way to demand solutions over there. And for that matter, it wasn't strictly America that was attacked over here. The buildings selected had a high international business content to them....WORLD trade centers...not AMERICAN trade centers.

You can't ignore all the pertinant side information regarding this conflict and post a poll that is inflammatory at best because it is ignoring the entire web of the problem in favor of illuminating only one strand of it.

The poll is too vague for that matter as well. An entire year could pass without a single death, and then they manage to nuke a city somewhere. The poll might be better if it debated how terrorists might optimize the numbers of dead in America through various attack techniques. Even so, it is a guesing game at best. They might goof and allow some horrible bug to get out into the world which could decimate the entire planet.

The numbers game here to suggest terrorists are capable or incapable does little justice to the reality of guerilla tactics against status quo armies. Our own history demonstrates nicely how effective the guerrilas can be, and it appears people in the Middle East understand this better than Americans do.

Much of the posting in Politics, at this time, Craven-
concerns the knowledge of the event of the terrorism, 9/11.

I have found a site on the web, that explains a lot-
and especially to me, one who knows the terrifying acts of electronic harassment. Therefore, it is not difficult for me to believe he is harassed, and how, and why. I am there.

This Blog, however long, is extremely interesting in how absolutely it can be true.

Of course, plain citizens cannot prove things against those 'holding' the reins of power. The fact that he (the blogger) is alive, (also that I am alive)...is the most prominent indicator of how perfectly SAFE they feel, from exposure.

http://911rushtojudgment.blogspot.com/

It has been said by responsible sources that 'It is inevitable that there will be a terrorist attack in London'. But as my son who lives there says, with the nonchalance of a 20-year-old, '8 million people - pretty unlikely chance of it being me' and puts it out of his mind. The only power of terrorism is terror, and as has been mentioned in this thread, terror of rape and street violence and other things already keep many of the population in thrall.
There would be significantly less terror if the media didn't bang on about it so much - either the political kind or the everyday violent kind.

Londoners became quite used to terror, in a strange way, during the peak of the IRA bombings.

I remember speaking to a friend in London, and hearing a rumbling - when I asked what it was, she said calmly - "Oh, just a bomb".

Mind you - the IRA often phoned in a warning....


I am wondering if we will be next here - two large amounts of fertiliser, used in bombs like the Bali bomb - have gone missing recently.

Yes, Oz is definitelyon their agenda. And yes, the Brits became kind of nonchalant about the IRA bombs. After all, we have folk memories of the blitz, and USA has never had actual war on its territory on that scale.

But I was in a bombscare on a Fiji-bound plane out of Sydney when they were having coups all the time, and I have to admire the Oz approach to the news that we were making an unscheduled stop in New Caledonia because 'Sydney says there's a bomb on board'. Most people laughed and joked about getting a new stamp in their passports and wondered whether the souvenir shops would be open. Hats off to you phlegmatic antipodeans!

Lol - hope we are as calm if/when it really happens here - instead of Bali.

Mind you, I got used to sudden tube stops for bomb scares when I was in London - I was staying near tower Bridge - a favourite target for hoax bomb threats, it seems...

After what happened in Spain, wouldn't you think terrorists would want to do something soon, before the election, to give the appearance of having the power to sway an election in the most powerful country in the world? New York has a huge bullseye painted on it, and I'm right in the damn middle of it.

Scary ****.

scarier, even
What's scarier to me, and what has been missing from many of the previous posts (including the Wall Street Journal article), is the way that fear has been used for political reasons in the US. From Sen. Frist's "Bio War-Safe Rooms" to Cheney's duct tape debacle, to the direct statements of the President with the cooperation of the media, fear has been raised to a dominant factor today. In the old days, fear mostly helped sell deodorant and diet pills.

I think this factor has been a key reason why democracy as we knew it is gone--today, we are paralyzed and controlled by fear, created, generated and magnified by those who--we are told--will protect us.

Fear kills hope, and I have never seen my country feeling so hope-less in my lifetime... I think that is the real underlying issue we must face.

I would have to say that 0-10 people will die from terrorism this year. The real question is how many people will be spared due to the current preventative measures in place? Using the Israel conflict as a measure of attitude, the only possible solution to the radical palestinians is the elimination of the Jews. If we ignored it here it would most likely become extremely prevalent, because the radical islamic solution is the complete elimination of all the "infidels." I think very few Americans view that as a viable solution. If the government ignored it, the people here would probably put a stop to it quite quickly.

Reducing sapient lives to numbers, or generalizing them into groups of victims or aggresors, is self contradictory, immoral, and against the basis of humanity. Fighting our desires to simplify humanity into groups will not win us hearts and mind, but perhaps they need to be understood, and not simply won over.

Various terrorist groups, partricularly Al Qaeda, are actively trying to attack America in a way that kills a large number of people. They frequently say so. A number of such plots have been discovered and stopped before they could be implemented, e.g. the millemium bomb attack in Seattle. A group of large bombs in a mall on a Friday night could be fairly effective. There are too many ways to enumerate. Sooner or later, one of the groups trying to do this will succeed.

They are also seeking WMD. If any of the people trying to implement a WMD atack in the US succeeds, the numbers would probably be much greater than what is being considered in this poll.

Of course, some may believe either that (a) no one is trying to do this, or (b) although people are always trying, no one will ever succeed, but I think that that is an unrealistic position.

I am so tired of the hysteria over terrorism that is taking over people's lives.

Here's a list of how many people die annually from various causes in US:

Tobacco 435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 400,000
Alcohol 85,000 / 101,653
Microbial Agents 75,000
Toxic Agents 55,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes 43,000 / 26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs 32,000
Suicide 30,622
Incidents Involving Firearms 29,000
Homicide 20,308
Sexual Behaviors 20,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect 17,000
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin 7,600

How many died in 9/11? Less than 4,000?

Lets face it, way more Americans will die this year from being fat, drunk, and smoking than from terrorism. Why aren't we more afraid of being fat? Why not more fear on the roadway? Come one, we gotta fear this stuff, people!

I know, lets stay inside, not exercise, have a big dinner, smoke a cigar, get drunk, and watch the latest on the Fox News terrorism report. Then have a heart attack cause we get so scared.

We're safer than the American Indians were during any year after the Europeans (terrorists?) came to North America.

Clary, As one of 6 billion on this planet, I don't fear for my safety from terrorism. It's more likely that my demise will happen in my car driving in the neighborhood. That's not to say I'm ready to travel to Iraq or Isreal any time soon, but I'm willing to travel to Egypt, Jordan, Iran, and the Baltics.