Terrorism is in the intent, not the effect.

A man places a charge in a fuel truck, drives it to Dodger stadium to blow up a World Series crowd to make a statement for his cause, but accidentally self-detonates on a remote road and no one is aware of his true intent nor is impacted by the blast.

Another man is merely driving his fuel truck through LA to make is scheduled deliveries, and a freak electrical shortage initiates a blast killing him, and 30 bystanders, causing millions of dollars in damage and impacting the populace of S. California for months.

Which one is a terrorist? The one who terrorized or the one who intended to terrorize?

I think our current definitions are overly politicized.

President Bush left office on the one proud metric that post-9/11 "we have not been attacked." This is a record that Politicians want to keep intact; if not in fact, then by simply defining what are clearly terrorist acts, like the last two Texas events, out of that realm.

To imply that one is only a terrorist if they are linked to AQ or some similar foreign organization that regularly employs terrorist tactics to seek its political goals is as obscene as it is absurd.