MUST READ ARTICLE ON TERRORISM

JOHN MUELLER - The number of people worldwide who die as a result of
international terrorism is generally only a few hundred a year, tiny
compared to the numbers who die in most civil wars or from automobile
accidents. In fact, in almost all years, the total number of people
worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists anywhere in
the world is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the
United States. . . What is needed, as one statistician suggests, is some
sort of convincing, coherent, informed, and nuanced answer to a central
question: "How worried should I be?" Instead, the message the nation has
received so far is, as a Homeland Security official put (or caricatured)
it, "Be scared; be very, very scared -- but go on with your lives." Such
messages have led many people to develop what Leif Wenar of the
University of Sheffield has aptly labeled "a false sense of insecurity."

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv27n3/v27n3-5.pdf