In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, support for Osama bin Laden was 4 % in January 2008.

It would seem that most Moslems do not believe in Osama bin Laden and terrorism.

But the US government wants you to think that Moslem terrorism is on the increase.

What are the facts?

Canada's Simon Fraser University has been researching terror. (What's really scary about terror statistics)

The Simon Fraser University study points out that US government agencies have figures on terrorism which are wildly inaccurate.

A US government-funded database of terrorism is the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terror (MIPT).

The Simon Fraser study points out that US agencies count civilian casualties in Iraq as terrorism.

In the MIPT data, Iraq accounts for 80% of all deaths counted.

According to the Simon Fraser study director Professor Andrew Mack:

In the Congo in 1999, hundreds were killed by militia actions. The MIPT notes zero deaths that year from terrorism in the Congo. In other words, civilian casualties, in a war situation, do not seem to count as terrorism.

If you leave aside the Iraq war, terrorism has gone way down over the past five years.

The Simon Fraser study points to the "extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years."

An ABC/BBC poll in Afghanistan in 2007 showed support for militants in the country to be 1 % .

In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, support for Osama bin Laden was 4 % in January 2008.

The University of Maryland's Center for International Development and Conflict Management has documented a 54 % decline in the number of organizations using violence across the Middle East and North Africa between 1985 and 2004.

So, who might the security services recruit as a terrorist? A mentally backward guy? Someone in prison for drug offences?





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