Quotes by Neil Livingstone

“The history of things that dont happen is often the most difficult history to write.”

“I dont know anyone who believes it wasnt political. The failure to include Las Vegas is mind-boggling. Theyre either using the wrong data or the wrong system if they think Las Vegas is not a target.”

“It is safe being in a very dangerous country but the keys are speed and unpredictability. Hes going to go into Islamabad for a very short period of time. Its going to be unpredictable. When Clinton went there six years ago there were so many vehicles in the convoy, nobody knew where the president was at all. It was like a show game. Theyll do the same thing for President Bush on this.”

The term terrorism is widely misused. It is utilized in its generic sense as a form of shorthand by governments and the media and is applied to a variety of acts and occurrences that approximate terrorism in form but not in substance or, worse yet, that have no real resemblance to terrorism at all. Terrorism, if nothing else, is violence, or threats of violence, but it is not mindless violence, as some observers have charged. Usually, when employed in a political context, it represents a calculated series of actions designed to intimidate and sow fear through-out a target population in an effort to produce a pervasive atmosphere of insecurity, a widespread condition of anxiety. A terrorist campaign that causes a significant threshold of fear among the target population may achieve its aims. In some instances, terrorism is potentially a more effective, especially from a cost-benefit perspective, strategy that conventional or guerrilla warfare, however, the goal of terrorism is not to destroy the opposing side but instead to break its will and force it to capitulate.