None of those options are easy and I've never seen a real proposal to seriously attempt 1. Other than statistics, how would you go about it?
http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want. (...)
Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.
And giving up your freedoms "because of the terrorism" is the worst thing imaginable.
The problem is how to somehow transmit said wisdom into the brains of those 99.9% of the population who do not read HN or Bruce Schneier or otherwise think deeply on these matters.
So what, do we place limits on reporting?
And controlling the press by "placing limits" is the opposite of democratic. If anything, most of the press is even now too limited in their approach, effectively supporting the interest groups who benefit from having "terror threat."
The effect of the press is best measured not by what reporters are allowed to do, but by what people actually end up watching. More freedom of the press is not going to eliminate the if it bleeds it leads philosophy. In fact, if we assume that cable news and newspapers have gotten shriller to deal with competition from the internet, it might do the opposite.
There is a reason this comic exists[0] [0]http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3081#comic
Dying from too many cheeseburgers is totally unsexy, and as a bonus implies that there may be consequences to doing what we want all the time. Booooooriiiing.
The Bush White House spent five years practically emotionally torturing America with its color codes and terrorist threat propaganda to justify a massive expansion of the military industrial complex.
I think the terror happened without the government, they just milked it to increase budgets, get new powers, and invade Iraq.
While their superficial mission is to "eliminate" terrorism. The incentives are quite the opposite. 1) Will not happen from above. There won't be a White House policy to as a war on Fear of Terrorism. It will have to come from the citizens.