Television footage of the only man convicted in the Lockerbie bombing lying in bed, purportedly comatose with advanced prostate cancer at his Tripoli home, has provided a focal point for a question asked with new urgency in places far from Libya: With Col. Muammar el-Gadhafi's government in ruins, what reckoning is likely for the terrorist bombings that were once a signature of the former Libyan leader's war with the Western world?

So terrorism was Gadhafi's "signature," and many "nations" hope a full accounting will be forthcoming. What's the record that Burns has put together?

Obviously he talks about Pan Am 103, which is the most visible example. But there are serious questions about the link between Libya and the Lockerbie bombing. Burns mentions the 1986 Berlin nightclub bombing, which killed three people. The judge at the 2001 trial said the  Libyan government bore some responsibility, but a connection to Gadhafi could not be established. The Times account of the trial mentioned in passing that prosecutors alleged that the disco bombing was launched  "to retaliate against the sinking of two Libyan boats by the United States in the Gulf of Sirte." It's unlikely that many people remember these acts, which likely killed a fair number of Libyans.

The other examples Burns cites are support for the Irish Republican Army--similar schemes were undertaken around the world, including here in the United States--a shooting outside a British embassy that killed a police officer and the disappearance of a religious leader in Lebanon during a visit to Libya.

This is not to suggest that Gadhafi was innocent of any of these charges. His rule in Libya was marked by vicious attacks and repression inside the country.

But it's difficult to imagine someone at the Times writing about international hunger for accountability for terrorist acts supported, linked to or committed by George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. It's not as if it would be difficult to point to their "signature" acts--support for deadly, anti-democratic death squads in Latin America, the massive destruction and violence unleashed on Iraq, or the torture and prisoner deaths that occurred on Bush's watch. But something tells that if you were to to try to write about these "signature" acts of American terrorism in connection to either--or even to Henry Kissinger's record--someone at the New York Times might try to have you committed.

After Bolling's error, erasing 9/11 and several other deadly terrorism attacks from the Bush record, was pointed out by outlets including Media Matters and Huffington Post, the host returned to the air Thursday to issue a correction that sounded more like a retaliation against those who dared correct him. Bolling denounced the  "radical liberal left" and accused Media Matters of pettiness for pointing out the error, in an emotional tirade in which he exclaimed:

No, I haven't forgotten. I happened to be standing there, watching in true terror as radical Islamists slammed planes into the towers that morning. I remember the towers collapsing, killing 3,000, including 16 of my close friends. And I really remember trying to comfort the kids of my friends at their memorial services.

Bolling's temporary amnesia about the September 11 attacks puts him in company with many conservatives who have distorted the Bush record on terrorism  (Extra!, 3/10). But even the correction part of Bolling's tirade was in error:

Yesterday I misspoke when I said there were no U.S. terror attacks during the Bush years. Obviously, I meant in the aftermath of 9/11.

Among the terror attacks Bolling's revised position erases from the Bush record: the  September/October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five, the December 2001 "shoe bombing" attempt, the July 2002 attack on the L.A. airport's El Al ticket counter that left two dead, the "D.C. sniper" attacks in October 2002 that killed 10,  the  March 2006 SUV attack on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus that injured nine and the July 2008 murder of two at a progressive Knoxville, Tennessee church, which were carried out by a gunmen who said he was inspired by Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg.

According to the Huffington Post, none of the panelists on the show challenged Bolling's initial error about 9/11. But should we be surprised? Among those panelists was former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino, who is on the record insisting to an unfazed Sean Hannity, "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."

Murdoch installed Ailes in the corner office on Fox's second floor at 1211  Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was  close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to  attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing a demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having "bombproof glass" installed in the windows--even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet. Looking down on the street below, he expressed his fears to Cooper, the editor he had tasked with up-armoring his office. "They'll be down there protesting," Ailes said. "Those gays."

And also Muslims (or janitors who look like they could be Muslim):

Ailes begins each workday buffered by the elaborate private security detail that News Corp. pays to usher him from his $1.6 million home in New Jersey to his office in Manhattan. (His country home--in the aptly named village of Garrison--is phalanxed by empty homes that Ailes bought up to create a wider security perimeter.) Traveling with the Chairman is like a scene straight out of 24. A friend recalls hitching a ride with Ailes after a power lunch: "We come out of the building and there’s an SUV filled with big guys, who jump out of the car when they see him. A cordon is formed around us. We’re ushered into the SUV, and we drive the few blocks to Fox's offices, where another set of guys come out of the building to receive 'the package.' The package is taken in, and I'm taken on to my destination."

Ailes is certain that he's a top target of Al-Qaeda terrorists. "You know, they're coming to get me," he tells friends. "I'm fully prepared. I've taken care of it." (Ailes, who was once arrested for carrying an illegal handgun in Central Park, now carries a licensed weapon.)

Inside his blast-resistant office at Fox News headquarters, Ailes keeps a monitor on his desk that allows him to view any activity outside his closed door. Once, after observing a dark-skinned man in what Ailes perceived to be Muslim garb, he put Fox News on lockdown. "What the hell!" Ailes shouted. "This guy could be bombing me!" The suspected terrorist turned out to be a janitor. "Roger tore up the whole floor," recalls a source close to Ailes. "He has a personal paranoia about people who are Muslim--which is consistent with the ideology of his network."

It's a good thing he doesn't run his cable news channel based on this sort of paranoia and fear-mongering.

The editors argued that in fact, the focus on Muslims is justified based on the facts:

Since 9/11, there have been more than 50 known cases, involving about 130 individuals, in which terrorist plots were hatched on American soil. These include plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, an office tower in Dallas, a federal court house in Illinois, the Washington, D.C. metro, and the trans-Alaska pipeline. Most of these schemes were foiled at an early stage, though the Times Square bomber failed only at the moment of ignition. The worst attack was Major Nidal Hasan's November 2009 murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood.

In a useful report published by the Rand Corporation last year, terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins notes that the plotters were a "diverse group" that included Caucasians, African-Americans and Hispanics as well as immigrants (or their children) from about 20 countries. Yet all but two of the plotters were Muslim, and those two sought to offer their services to al Qaeda.

So much, then, for the notion that it is bigoted for Mr. King to focus on Muslim radicalization. This is where the current threat lies.

This is a complete misrepresentation of the Rand report. The report is exclusively about Muslim radicalization and jihadism, not about domestic terrorism in general, as the WSJ would lead you to believe--if anything, it's surprising that there are any non-Muslim jihadist plotters. (The exceptions were two men who agreed for their own secular purposes to collaborate with undercover FBI informants purporting to work for al Qaeda.)

The vast majority of "homegrown" terrorist attackers--those of all ideologies who successfully carry out an attack--are not Muslim, the report finds: Of the "83 terrorist attacks in the United States between 9/11 and the end of 2009, only three...were clearly connected with the jihadist cause." The other jihadist plots referred to by both the report and the WSJ were disrupted by authorities--quite often because those authorities themselves helped generate them.

One key point of the report, in fact, is to say that homegrown jihadism is not nearly as big a threat as it's made out to be--exactly the opposite of the argument that the WSJ is trying to make.

"Americans are entitled to an assessment of how serious a threat this is," wrote the WSJ editors. I agree: It's about time they and the rest of the King hearing supporters (that includes you, Bill O'Reilly) stop unjustly demonizing American Muslims and present the facts.