Remember that the State Dept. Department withdrew its annual report on global terrorism and handed it off to the new National Counterterrorism Centre after inaccuracies in it's 2003 statistics led to general derision?
Well, the NTC just quietly released it's report. In 2004 there were 3,192 terror attacks worldwide with 28,433 victims. The London Times, in a report which ran alongside coverage of today's London bombs, noted:
Iraq, with 866, had the most attacks against civilians and other non-combatants, according to the report. Under the April figures, Iraq was considered to have suffered 201 attacks in 2004.
The new tally included attacks on Iraqis by Iraqis, a category previously excluded because it was not considered international terrorism. But attacks against coalition forces were omitted, because soldiers are considered combatants. Insurgent attacks on Iraqi police, deemed non-combatants, were included.
That means around 27% of all terror attacks on civilians were in Iraq in 2004. Worldwide, only 18% of all attacks were attributed to Islamist groups.
The US suffered 5 terror attacks in 2004, all domestic. The largest was an arson attack in Utah for which the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility.
For my money, when two thirds of all attacks are outwith Iraq and four fifths are not made by Islamist terrorists then it's the US and it's allies that are blinkered and stuck in a flypaper of their own making in Iraq and not the terrorists.
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