14,000 Terror Attacks In 2006
49% Of All Terror Attacks Occurred In Iraq And Afghanistan
When President Bush first started talking about going to war against terrorists, and terrorist groups, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington DC and New York City, the term used was 'War Against Terror'.
The 'War Against Terror' was in common usage by the US State Department, the Pentagon and the White House until late 2002, when it was quietly changed to the 'War On Terror'. The change from 'against' to 'on' is an important distinction, particularly in light of an utterly horrific new report from the US State Department that reveals there were more than 14,000 terror attacks and acts of terrorism in 2006.
A war 'against' terror instead of 'on' terror would then be harder to justify when the following details from the State Department report are considered :
(the report will) show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006....almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan...That the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan have dramatically increased the incidents of terrorism are firmly, repeatedly and consistently denied by virtually every official connected with the White House or Pentagon, despite the fact that every major intelligence agency in the world says this is an undeniable fact.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year's edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.
Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community's National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.
Worldwide, there were about 5,800 terrorist attacks that resulted in at least one fatality, also up from 2005.
The figures for Iraq and elsewhere are limited to attacks on noncombatants and don't include strikes against U.S. troops.
President Bush and his aides routinely call Iraq the "central front" in Bush's war on terrorism and likely will say that the preponderance of attacks there and in Afghanistan prove their point.
But critics say the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have worsened the terrorist threat.
The contention by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that al-Qaida terrorists were in Iraq and allied with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the invasion has been disproved ...
Among the major strikes were bombings in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Dahab on April 24, which killed 23 people and injured more than 60, and aboard trains in Mumbai, India, that left more than 200 dead and in excess of 700 wounded on July 11.
White House and Pentagon officials continue to insist that Saddam Hussein was involved with Al Qaeda before the American occupation of Iraq began because it is the only way they can seriously deny that Al Qaeda terrorists were not in Iraq before invasion and occupation began.
A 'War on Terror' can be credibly waged even during unprecedented waves of terror attacks, and the statistics spun a dozen different ways to say that war is being waged, in part, successfully.
But to say that you are waging a 'War Against Terror', when there are more terror attacks than ever before, is to declare failure by admission.
Few understood why, or even noticed, the 'War Against Terror' was officially renamed the 'War On Terror' back in 2002.
It is dramatically clear now why this renaming process was undertaken, and indicates that the Pentagon and White House were fully aware of intelligence and military-related projections before the Iraq invasion began that such unpopular, supposedly pre-emptive action would lead to greatly increased incidents of terrorism across the world.
