Numbers Count (if we are to understand Bush's policy)

Phillip Bobbitt, the author of Terror and Consent : The Wars for the Twenty-First Century points out that the number of American deaths from terrorism are on the same order of magnitude as those from lightning strikes or eating peanuts. Worldwide deaths from terrorism are less than deaths in the bathtub.

The so called "war on terrorism" is not funded as if it were a war, is not manned as were wars of the past, is not authorized in our political system as a war. In another context he comments that we need new words, but tend to recycle existing words with new meanings.