As the Democratic Party continues to hammer away at their message and insist that the Bush administration’s policies “have not made us safer,” here’s news that directly contradicts their defeatism: Iraq figures distort terrorism statistics: study.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A study released on Wednesday reports a decline in fatal attacks of terrorism worldwide and says U.S. think-tank data showing sharp increases were distorted due to the inclusion of killings in Iraq.

“Even if the Iraq ‘terrorism’ data are included, there has still been a substantial decline in the global terrorism toll,” said the 2007 Human Security Brief, an annual report funded by the governments of Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Britain.

For example, global terrorism fatalities declined by 40 percent between July and September 2007, driven by a 55 percent decline in the “terrorism” death toll in Iraq after the so-called surge of new U.S. troops and a cease-fire by the Shi’ite militant Mehdi Army, the brief said.

“We have concluded that the expert consensus (on terrorism) is probably misleading,” Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Report Project, told a news conference.