Prometheus 6

John Tierney's [TS] Waiting for Al-Qaeda is correct in every particular.

The Bush administration likes to take credit for stopping domestic plots, but it’s hard to gauge whether these are much more than the fantasies of a few klutzes. Bush also claims that the war in Iraq has diverted terrorists’ attention there, but why wouldn’t global jihadists want the added publicity from attacking America at home, too? Al Qaeda’s leaders threatened in 2003 to attack America — along with a half dozen other countries that haven’t been attacked either.

Mueller’s conclusion is that there just aren’t that many terrorists out there with the zeal and the competence to attack the United States. In his forthcoming book, “Overblown,” he argues that the risk of terrorism didn’t increase after Sept. 11 — if anything, it declined because of a backlash against Al Qaeda, making it a smaller and less capable threat than before. But the terrorism industry has been too busy hyping Sept. 11 and several other attacks to notice.

It has found a new audience for old dangers. For more than half a century, experts have warned that terrorists could destroy a city with a weapon of mass destruction. They still might, but their failure so far suggests it isn’t easy to do, and it didn’t suddenly become easier on Sept. 11.