Holy flypaper!

Today's tragic bombings in London should give pause to those on the right who have been espousing the "flypaper" theory of why things are actually a big success in Iraq-- the idea is that since Iraq is now a magnet for terrorists, the rest of the world is terrorist-free. Wrong. Sadly, tragically wrong. Another feeble attempt to justify the invasion of Iraq bites the dust. Or would, if these people weren't naturalized citizens of Bizarro World. As usual, the facts are diamterically opposed to their argument:

The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate about whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said Tuesday.

The number of "significant" international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed Monday on the numbers by U.S. State Department and intelligence officials.

The number of incidents more than tripled? That's bad enough. But as it turns out, those numbers aren't quite accurate:

The Bush administration on Tuesday released new figures for global terrorism that showed there were almost 3,200 terrorist incidents worldwide in 2004.

In April the US State Department had said there were 651 "international" terrorism incidents last year. But using a broader definition to include attacks that "deliberately hit civilians or non-combatants" the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) on Tuesday raised that number to 3,192. The incidents resulted in the deaths, injury or kidnapping of almost 28,500 people.

The number of terrorist incidents didn't triple in 2004. It was eighteen times more than in 2003. New York, Madrid, and London. Will anything cause the right-wingers to admit that they might not be pursuing the smartest policy? Iraq isn't putting experienced terrorists in the US crosshairs-- it's creating a new generation.

(I probably shouldn't have given this post such a flippant title, but it's an insider reference.)