The FBI is finally admitting that last summer's El Al counter shooting at LAX was a terrorist act.

[Update at 10:05 AM PDT]

Not counting the DC sniper (which is still a little fuzzy as to motivation), by my count this was the last actual act of terrorism on US soil to date. Since then, there's been nothing, even with the war. Has "homeland security" really improved that much, did we kill a lot of the potential perps in Afghanistan, was Al Qaeda a paper tiger, or some or all of the above?

Good to see they were able to join the rest of us.

No, I'm being too snarky. They have an obligation to be cautious about such pronouncements. They really do.

They don't have an obligation to bend over backwards for months and deny that it was terrorism, which was essentially what they did. There would have been nothing wrong with saying that it appeared to be terrorism, even at the time, because it obviously did. It just looked like continued political correctness and hypersensitivity to the "feelings" of American Muslims.

The FBI pretty much sucks, they are an organization whose primary concern is thier own power and prestige, everything else is secondary.

As for Homeland Security, all of the above.

How much terrorism did we see in the decade leading up to 9/11?

How much have we seen since?

Not much in both cases. Yes, some of us paid attention to it. And most terrorism was against American targets in foreign countries -- where Homeland Security doesn't operate.

Al Qaeda is dieing. They pulled off one spectacular.

What we really need to do is to understand what causes terrorism to grow and, given that understanding, work to reduce the probability of future terrorist groups.

Note to people who don't understand the word understand: understand does not mean "approve" or "tolerate." It means to gain knowledge of how a phenomenon occurred. Some of us "understand" how the sun shines. It will go on doing so whether we approve or not. Similarly, to understand "terrorism" is not to approve it.

I'm not sure I understand how the sun shines, but after several days of clouds and rain here, I do most wholeheartedly approve.