A very old insight in terrorism is found in the military imbalance between two parties that are more or less at war with each other. When one party has a far bigger army and the other can hide in the mountains or between the population it is logical that the military major will declare all actions done against them 'terrorist actions'.

Lately there was an American university (I don't know the name anymore) and they did flea through many many so called 'terrorist attacks' and they came up with the dimension of political transformation or political transition.

The relation between poverty and terror could not be validated, that looks correct to me: poverty is like suffocation and does not bring around the hate needed for so called terrorist attacks. Of course we define a terrorist attack as one on a so called 'soft object' (like shops, market places, mosques and so on).
You can also say that a terrorist attack is an attack with military means in a civil environment.
Furthermore it is not relevant if the attack is staged by those in uniform or not, only the civil or soft nature is defining in this.

There will be some armies complaining about this definition of a terrorist attack but I have no message at local political feelings and nuances, it is soft target and basta.

With these two dimensions, military imbalance and political transition, you can come a long way in understanding why terror attacks emerge. For example the Irish Republican Army (the IRA) and the Spanish-Bask ETA are nice examples of military imbalance while the latest sting of attacks in Lebanon fall more under the political transition dimension. It's all only theory of course but it brings a bit of simple sense to what is happening on a wider scale. Till updates.

Have you ever seen the two widely different pictures of Zarqawi? They are at the left (old one) and on the right (from a recent video capture), the one in the middle I shrunk with the graphics program to 75% of the 'original height'. Guess how Zarqawi fooled the Americans?

It is very well possible the Americans don't have his fingerprints or don't have fingerprint scanners, they might not have a voice recording or not a voice recognition system at the Fallujah scene. And facial recognition when they only had those photo's in the media did not do much good either, with or without facial scanners.

Facial scanners are nasty things, growing a beard or so just doesn't help much. This apparatus measures all kinds of distances like for example between the inner points of the eye with the nose tip. But stretching Abu Musab Zarqawi out in a vertical direction likely spoils all vertical and diagonal measurements.... What do you think my dear reader, were the old Zarqawi pictures correct pictures?

• We have, Tim, been down this effort now for six months at the U.N. with the enactment of 1441. We asked for a declaration of all of his WMD come clean. He refused to do that. He’s, again, continued to do everything he could to thwart the inspectors.
  I’m hard-put to specify what it is he could do with credibility at this stage that would alter the outcome. 
  
  He’s always had the option of coming clean, of complying with the resolution, of giving up all of his weapons of mass destruction, of making his scientists available without fear of retribution, turning over the anthrax, and the VX nerve agent, and the sarin, and of the other capabilities he has developed, and he has consistently refused. And if he were to sit here today and say, “OK, now I’ll do it,” I’m not sure anybody would think that had credibility. 
• "If we can start to change the most powerful country in the Middle East, the others will follow," Bush said. "Americans 20 years down the road won't have to deal with a day like Sept. 11, 2001." 

The first quote is done by dumbhead US vice prez Dick Cheney on March 16 2003 and the second quote (where again Iraq and the 9/11 attacks are linked) was done today by commander in chief US prez Bush. Now how come the Iraqis defied 17 UN resolutions on a row? Where has the sarin gone?

With the wisdom of hindsight we see the Iraqis did indeed not go against any UN resolution whatsoever and this is one more detail pointing to the illegality of the present war. Here in Holland we have a saying for these kinds of circumstances, it is: This mouse will have a tail.

Of course all American journalists will not burn their fingers upon possible illegal wars, I mean that won't serve the American interests isn't it. Criticism of the government is fine as long as it is about to large school classes or torture done by individuals in Guantonamy Bay or whatever what falls inside the Democrat-Republican ways of fighting. Just doing normal and study if this was is illegal is a bridge to far for these folks, that is not supporting the military and not in the interests of the USA... So we keep our mouths shut.

Title: Two twins named Rice.
        

Even centuries after guns were first invited one could still get killed by catapults and bow and arrow.

So nuke subs into insignificance is not true from the military point of view, they will stay magnificent weapons but is it magnificent enough? Is it enough?

Now the quote from what I wrote in a pissed mood yesterday:

There are on average something like 200 'significant' terrorist attacks every year so on average you count one attack in a working day of eight hours, that looks enough time to get good statistics. Ok sometimes it is hard to decide what is a 'significant' attack, are for example five sound bombs simultaneously at five HSBC banks in Turkey a terrorist attack of there is only damage and no wounded or dead?

Beside that it would be an easy job isn't it? You don't need to explain those attacks you only have to count them and compile a database with relevant information like date, country, time and possible perpetrators. With this wisdom in the back of your mind you can only wonder upon the next information from the US State Department, quoting:

__________________________

I do not have much to say on this, only that in October or November 2001 I understood that the USA would fight war on terror just like they did war on drugs. Meaning ensuring the enemy gets strong and big so they have a lot of 'good fighting evil' to do the coming years.

Could be statistics proof I was in the right with that insight... 

End of part 44.

NATO NATO, what did you forget? Now I'll kiss you with love & that's a fact!
       

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