a.k.a.
04-19-2005, 07:54 AM
Of
course it’s never been about making the world a safer place, but just for the record...
Bush administration
eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder
Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international
terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than
in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt
decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may
have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.
Last year, the number
of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism."
But
other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of
Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the
Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.
"Instead of dealing with
the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public,"
charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the
decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.
Rep. Henry Waxman,
D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last year's mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.
"This is
the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be
an effort to withhold it - or any of the key data - from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing
politics with this critical report."
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the
allegation that it was being done for political reasons was "categorically untrue."
According to Johnson and
U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided
to the State Department reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004.
That compared with 175 such
incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.
The statistics didn't include attacks on American
troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called "a central front in the war on terror."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm
course it’s never been about making the world a safer place, but just for the record...
Bush administration
eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder
Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international
terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than
in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt
decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may
have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.
Last year, the number
of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism."
But
other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of
Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the
Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.
"Instead of dealing with
the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public,"
charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the
decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.
Rep. Henry Waxman,
D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last year's mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.
"This is
the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be
an effort to withhold it - or any of the key data - from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing
politics with this critical report."
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the
allegation that it was being done for political reasons was "categorically untrue."
According to Johnson and
U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided
to the State Department reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004.
That compared with 175 such
incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.
The statistics didn't include attacks on American
troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called "a central front in the war on terror."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm