Special to BRAD BLOG by BTC News White House Correspondent Eric Brewer
Today the U.S. government released its 2005 report on worldwide terrorism. It reveals that, compared to the 2004 figures, the number of terrorist attacks more than tripled and the number of people killed in those attacks more than doubled. The hard data: last year saw 14,602 killed in 11,111 attacks.
Those are startling increases. Earlier this year, I reported on a different data set, compiled by the RAND Corporation, which showed much lower, but still substantial, increases of 36% in the number of deaths and 51% in the number of attacks.
Why the big differences? Essentially, what the Bush administration has been doing, ever since terrorism numbers started to shoot up after the invasion of Iraq, is try to obfuscate and spin the numbers in order to disguise the increases.
In 2004, they omitted almost two months of data from the 2003 report, so that it showed a decline in terrorism when actually there had been an increase. The Bush campaign started bragging about how great their War on Terror? was going, and they probably would’ve gotten away with it if a couple of college professors hadn’t complained. The State Department had to issue a corrected report a month later.
In 2005, Condoleezza Rice deleted all data from the 2004 report. After an outcry, some data was released by the National Counterterrorism Center, to whom the responsibility for deciding whether or not to release the data had been transferred. The numbers were high (significant attacks had tripled), but John Brennan, head of the NCTC, said that the increase was meaningless:
Later that year, the NCTC released a full report. But now, the numbers were so shockingly high (thanks to a change in methodology) that it was impossible to compare 2004 data with any previous year’s:
You see the strategy? If life hands you a lemon, make unsweetened lemonade. Preferably spiked with cyanide. Nobody will complain about how bad it tastes.
Now, in 2006, they’re still playing the same game. From today’s report:
And the “apples to oranges” line has already reappeared. What will they come up with next year?
Meanwhile, if you want to know what’s really happening with terrorism, ask the RAND Corporation, or The BRAD BLOG.
Look on the bright side … we have … wink wink … bottomed out … wink wink … and it is all uphill now … wink wink.
Hey Dredd, you got something in your eye? heehee
The insurgency is in its last throes.
Shit – they are throwing everything they have at us!
There is no global warming either – we compared January through May and October through December of last year with June through September of 2004 and it proves all those Scientists are wrong – it’s actually getting colder.
And all those glaciers have melted before – how do you think those mountains got under them?
Turror fiters you are doin a heckuva job …
" target="_blank">Chris Floyd’s latest "Moscow Times" piece shows the complicity of our own forces in this burgeoning epidemic of world-wide terror.
and
Oops…sorry about that! I was so SURE I’d closed the bold…
Meanwhile, the Administration attacks its own citizenry. It has been reported that administrative subpoenas were issued on 3501 persons (up from 15 in the preceding year) –these being warrantless intrusions into privacy issued without court review. And complied with (evidently) without question. And now Bush wants to prosecute journalists and anyone else who may hold re-classified information (another backward looking Bush security manuver) under a "state’s secrets" law.
One has to ask: why the Bush emphasis on secrecy?
I think the answer is no secret at all. Bush is either a paranoid delusional , or an idiot. He is on view in front of God and everybody. There is no way to keep THAT a secret!