The threat from Al Qaeda to the United States since the Sept. 11 2001 attacks has been “overblown” by officials, with the chances of becoming a victim the same as being killed by a comet, a US academic contends. Professor John Mueller, chairman of National Security Studies at Ohio State University, says in a new book that politicians and security officials overreacted to the threat and exaggerated what was really a small risk. “The threat is overblown. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist but I don’t think it’s of a cosmic nature. It’s not a threat to survival,” Mueller told Reuters at a high-profile security conference in London where he was one of the guest speakers.
| "You know, it's not until al-Qaeda kills 3 million of us that your risk of dying is even one percent. What are we worried about?" he added. |
He questioned why Al Qaeda had failed to attack the United States again since then, despite numerous grim warnings that had suggested that Osama bin LadenÂ’s group was active and on the verge of attacks.
| Certainly he won't buy the idea that perhaps, maybe, just possibly, the FBI, CIA and US military have put a big dent on al Qaeda's capabilities since 9/11. Nah, that can't be it. The US never gets anything right, we all saw that movie. |
The reason nothing had come to pass, he argued, was because the threat was nowhere near as serious as claimed, and that Al Qaeda probably had little or no US presence. “If the FBI says we can’t find any Al Qaeda cells one reaction is, why are we giving you so much money?” said Muller, whose “The Remnants of War” won an award for best book on international relations in 2004. “It’s to your advantage to exacerbate the threat and say it’s really out there.”
Mueller said the Department for Homeland Security had identified 80,000 potential targets from shopping malls to the Weeki Wachee Springs water park in Florida. But the chances of being killed by an act of terrorism are 80,000 to 1, he contends, the same as being killed by a comet or an asteroid.
According to his calculations, about 200 people worldwide have died in non-combat areas as a result of Al Qaeda action since Sept. 11. “That’s 200 too many but not a threat to an international system or any modern state,” he reasoned. “Two to three hundred die every year in the United States alone from drowning in a bath tub.”
| So who cares if a bunch of terrorists blow up a subway tube in London or Madrid, or a beach bar in Bali? Your odds are still less than 1%, right? Where's that meteor? |
| He's even worse: he knows people who have died at the hands of terrorists and he still doesn't get the message. |