Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Math is hard

These quotes from a National Review Online article caught my eye:

Roughly 240 people have been killed in terrorist attacks inspired or directly commissioned by the Islamic State since 2015, according to Reuters
 
A Tunisian Islamic extremist killed eleven people at a Christmas market in Berlin in 2016 and a similar truck attack killed more than 80 people in Nice, France that same year. The most costly Islamist attack in France occurred in November 2015, when gunmen killed 130 revelers in and around the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on a Saturday night.
So the NRO writer managed to find just three attacks totaling 221 people killed, plus the four killed in the latest Christmas market shooting, for a total of 225.  Apparently Reuters thinks that there have only been 15 other people killed by IS inspired attacks in the past three or four years?  Either they are delusional or dishonest.  Or they are pulling the typical trick about starting the count after that last big attack.

American leftists like to bandy about a figure on terrorist attacks "since 9/11".  Really makes things look a lot better when you don't count the 3,000+ people who died in that attack.  Perhaps Reuters is pulling a similar stunt to downplay the threat.

Meanwhile, religionofpeace.com, which tracks Islamic inspired terror attacks, claims that there have been 91 already in December, 911 in November 2018, and 34262 since 9/11.  Maybe their numbers are overstated but the difference between Reuters and ROP is pretty significant.  Given the examples listed by NRO, I think it is clear that Reuters is busy downplaying the threat of terrorism.

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