| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 5/24 |
| 2004/6/10 [Politics/Domestic/911, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:30726 Activity:very high |
6/10 This keeps getting deleted, but nevermind. Global terrorism report
being revised by State Department after Administration meddling.
Revisions will show terrorism at highest level in 20 years, rather
than lowest level in 34 years as originally stated.
http://csua.org/u/7o4 (latimes via yahoo news)
\_ Piffle. An LA Times story with unnamed sources critical of the Bush
administratioN? What a surprise. Wait until the facts come out and
then post it again.
\_ You are way, way understating this. The poster, IMO, overstated
somewhat. Let's just call it what it is. They are revising
the report ... upward.
And, a Washington Post story today: http://csua.org/u/7op
This is where you say, "Liberal media ... bad!"
\_ Its only true if Rush Limbaugh says so.
\_ Rush never said you're an idiot, but it's still true.
\_ I always laugh when people attack radio, tv, newspaper or
other public figures they've never listened to, seen, read,
etc.
\_ I didn't cry "libural media"--I was criticizing a single
paper. I don't trust the LA Times or the NY Times unless it's
corroborated. And I don't trust unnamed sources. Oh, and I
don't listen to Rush.
\_ revise the report to go back to 900 AD and see how much terrorism
the muslim world produced
\_ RACIST!
\_ Why do you hate history?
\_ Include the Crusades then too.
\_ Crusades was dark ages version of "War on Terror" |
| 5/24 |
|
| csua.org/u/7o4 -> story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=716&e=28&u=/latimests/20040609/ts_latimes/uswillrevisedataonterror By Josh Meyer Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration. Subscribe to the Los Angeles Times When the most recent "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report was issued April 29, senior Bush administration officials immediately hailed it as objective proof that they were winning the war on terrorism. The report is considered the authoritative yardstick of the prevalence of terrorist activity around the world. "Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against global terrorism, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L Armitage said during a celebratory rollout of the report. But on Tuesday, State Department officials said they underreported the number of terrorist attacks in the tally for 2003, and added that they expected to release an updated version soon. Several US officials and terrorism experts familiar with that revision effort said the new report will show that the number of significant terrorist incidents increased last year, perhaps to its highest level in 20 years. "It will change the numbers," said one State Department official who declined to comment further or be identified by name. "The incidents will go up, but I don't know by how many." Among the original report's highlights: The annual number of terrorist attacks had dropped to its lowest level in 34 years, declining by 45% since 2001. Minor terrorism events -- typically those in which nobody dies -- had almost disappeared, declining by more than 90% from 231 incidents in 2001 to 21 in 2003, the report said. The annual reports were first ordered up by Congress two decades ago as the US government's reference tool on terrorist activity, trends and groups. Since then, administration officials and Congress have come to rely heavily on the "Patterns" report in formulating counter-terrorism policies and strategies. In recent years, the report has been translated into five languages so that US allies around the world can scrutinize the hundreds of pages of data, which are based on US and allied intelligence information. Henry A Waxman (D-Los Angeles) applauded the State Department for deciding to reissue the report, a step he requested in a letter to Secretary of State Colin L Powell three weeks ago. "This manipulation may serve the Administration's political interests," Waxman wrote in his May 17 letter to Powell, "but it calls into serious doubt the integrity of the report." Several State Department officials vehemently denied their report was swayed by politics. "That's not the way we do things here," said one senior official. web sites), told Powell that the number of significant terrorist attacks since 2001 hasn't declined as the department claimed, but risen by more than 35%. And he cited an analysis by two independent experts who used figures provided by the State Department report in concluding that significant attacks actually had reached a 20-year high in 2003. For example, the State Department report listed 190 terrorist attacks in 2003, including 169 "significant" ones. But Waxman said a review showed the report stopped counting terrorist incidents on Nov. Waxman said the steep overall decline in terrorism claimed by the State Department was based mostly on a 90% drop in "nonsignificant" attacks in two years, without providing any detail as to how or why such a decrease occurred. Waxman asked Powell to provide by June 1 details on international terrorist attacks dating back to 1995, an explanation of procedures used in defining terrorist acts and information on whether political appointees played a role in writing or editing the report. Internationally, he added, "it feeds into the notion that the US is just not a credible voice on important issues of terrorism." A just-issued Congressional Research Service report has concluded that the statistical errors are just the latest in a series of problems that the "Patterns" report has faced in recent years. The congressional study said that the State Department report -- despite the perception of its objectivity -- was unduly influenced by political and economic considerations. Also, it said the department had failed to take into account the shift from state sponsorship of terrorism to Al Qaeda's use of a far-flung network of affiliates and cells. Though some might question the findings, the congressional report noted that the State Department appeared to be using outdated criteria to determine what constituted a terrorist incident. web sites) were not included in the "Patterns" report because they did not meet the State Department's long-standing criteria of targeting civilians or soldiers not on duty. Potentially dozens of other terrorist strikes were left out because they were not "international" in scope, including attacks by local Al Qaeda affiliates against targets within their own countries. web sites), according to the congressional study's author, Raphael Perl. "Arguably, the report has been on autopilot and has not kept up with the times," Perl said in a telephone interview. |
| csua.org/u/7op -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29664-2004Jun9.html Concedes Errors in Terror Data By R Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A17 Two months ago, the Bush administration released its annual report card on counterterrorism and gave itself an A The number of terrorist attacks around the globe, according to the State Department report called "Patterns of Global Terrorism," was at the lowest ebb in the past 34 years. Ambassador at Large for Counterterrorism J Cofer Black, citing the existence of only 190 acts of terrorism in 2003, called it "good news" attributable in part to unprecedented US collaboration with foreign partners. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L Armitage cited the data as "clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight." Not long afterward, however, the report was pilloried by academics, a lawmaker and others. They said its math defied the reality of a steady growth in the number and significance of terrorist attacks in 2003, as well as the worst type of attacks spreading from just a few countries to at least 10. The Congressional Research Service cited the complaints in a June 1 report urging a review of the report's "structure and content." report would claim that terrorism attacks are decreasing when in fact significant terrorist activity is at a 20-year high." Yesterday, after reviewing the matter more carefully, the department formally conceded it made a few mistakes. "At our request, the Terrorist Threat and Integration Center is reviewing and revising the statistics for 2003," spokesman Adam Ereli said. "We anticipate that a correction to the 'Patterns of Global Terrorism' will be publicly issued as soon as possible." Officials declined to detail the errors to be corrected by the center. It was created last year from elements of the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Defense Department, with the goal of becoming the authoritative administration voice on terrorism. But one senior official, speaking on the condition that he not be cited by name, said the corrections could fill eight pages, including a revised chronology of events, "a list of some things that should have been put in or left out," and various explanatory notes. Word of the State Department's decision was first reported yesterday by the Los Angeles Times. Larry C Johnson, a former CIA analyst and former deputy director of State's counterterrorism office, is among those who have urged a wide-ranging correction. He said that even using the report's own data, as presented in its statistical tables, the total number of terrorist incidents in 2003 rose, not fell, compared with 2002. The number of deaths in the tables was 390, not 307 as department officials asserted in public comments; the number of wounded was 1,895, not 1,593, Johnson said. He said the number of significant incidents -- involving victims who were killed, injured or kidnapped -- rose from 60 percent of incidents in 2002 to 89 percent in 2003. He also noted, as did Waxman and scholars at Princeton and Stanford universities, that the report omitted acts of terrorism after Nov. The department attributed this to a cutoff date for printing the report in time for its release on April 29. Johnson said the report also omitted from the list of significant acts of terrorism, for unknown reasons, the 13 terrorist attacks in Russia attributed to Chechens in 2003, which he said caused the deaths of 244 people. Although most significant attacks occurred in just two countries in 2002 -- Israel and India -- they occurred in 10 in 2003, Johnson said: Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey. |