Thursday, September 17, 2015

Americans Killed by Terrorism Since 9/11

One of the things that drove me crazy last night during the debates was when Jeb said his brother kept us safe, and that he did that by standing on the rubble with the fireman and showing that we were strong. As if 9/11 happening on his watch didn't count at all. Even though he ignored a national security briefing called Obama Determined to Strike in US while he was away in August on vacation (after taking more vacation than any other president in his first year. But hey, whatever.

The Council on Foreign Relations in July posted Obama’s Terrorism Mistake fact checking an Obama statement " if you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100." Obama's statement was wrong. Maybe he meant to say under his term, or maybe he meant to exclude Iraq and Afghanistan. The article links to this FP article from January which delves into the complexities of counting such a thing. They do claim "of the 335 Americans who have died from terrorism since 9/11, 268, or 80 percent, died within Iraq or Afghanistan".

Anyway, I plotted their data and just assumed that the Bush-Obama transition happened Jan 1, 2009 instead of Jan 20.

Screen Shot 2015 09 17 at 2 52 48 PM

Update: Here's a fun twitter stream to read, sounds like a Monty Python skit; "Right. So Katrina, Anthrax, 9/11, those multiple wars, the economy, the bank crisis, terrorism, then safe?"

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