Twofer:

Terrorist Attacks in Europe Thwarted at last moment

It is a sad fact in our media driven culture that a story about a group of Islamic extremists who were rounded up last week and discovered to be on the verge of carrying out several terrorist attacks receives little or no coverage but that if they had been successful, their names and deeds would be on everyone's lips.

Successes like these should be big stories...

[but that might remind folks of looming threat many would convince us is overblown to begin with...]

The Terror Scare?

Influential voices are peddling a dangerous fallacy: that the threat of terror is overblown, another example of scare tactics, like the supposedly nonexistent Communist threat in the 1940s and 1950s. Surprisingly level-headed people are hearing this siren call, at once so attractive and so dangerous.
[snip]
Among many obvious fallacies here one is paramount: the number of victims is only one metric for judging terrorist activity, and possibly the least telling. The number of victims is the factor most open to reduction. A country can't control the number of terrorists, it can't control the number of attacks, it can't control the number of attempts. But it can keep the terrorists, attacks, and attempts from being successful, which is precisely what U.S. antiterrorist policy has concentrated on since 9/11, and to all indications, quite successfully.
[snip]
Our campaign against Al-Queda and its offshoots has been extraordinarily successful. There have been no further attacks despite repeated attempts (another element ignored) But the next successful strike may well come from a completely different direction, from groups now considered harmless, or irrelevant, or that perhaps don't even yet exist...

[and above all else: the convergence of suicidal (non-deterable) martyrs and portable WMD. Long-ish, important, recommended >
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