Introduction

Terror and sensational violence are not new. They have always been a part of conflict. In the thirteenth century, Mongol hordes swept across Asia massacring civilians, using prisoners as human shields, and stacking the skulls of their victims in huge pyramids. Many perished during the Crusades and the European wars of religion. The Nazi death camps, Cambodia’s killing fields, Bosnia’s ethnic cleansing, and Rwanda’s slaughter of ethnic Tutsis are more recent examples. Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons attacks against the Kurds and America’s nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also state-sponsored acts of terror deliberately targeting innocent civilians.