Bush Team May Have Understated Terrorist Threat for Political Gain
Commentary ~ June 11, 2004: The U.S. government
acknowledged Thursday that its report declaring a decline in terrorism
in 2003 was wrong.
Dead wrong.
In fact, it was not even close.
The
report, which was released last April, was trumpeted by top administration
officials as a sign of the success of Bush’s war on terrorism.
The administration now admits that it was based on faulty data.
But did Bush or members of his team purposefully massage
the numbers for political gain? That’s the question worth
10,000 lives.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters
today that the corrected report will show “a sharp increase
over the previous year.” When will the corrected version be
made public? Boucher has no idea.
The New York Times quotes Boucher as saying
the errors began to become apparent in early May. "We got phone
calls from people who were going through our report and who said
to themselves, as we should have said to ourselves: 'This doesn't
feel right. This doesn't look right.' And who started asking us
questions," he said.
The annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism"
report is submitted in compliance with Title 22 of the United States
Code, Section 2656f(a), which requires the Department of State to
provide Congress a full and complete annual report on terrorism
for those countries and groups meeting the criteria of Section (a)(1)
and (2) of the Act.
The inaccurate report for 2003 claims there were
only 190 acts of international terrorism last year -- a slight drop
from 198 attacks the previous year and the lowest total since 1969.
When the report was released, Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage and Cofer Black, the State Department's ambassador
at large for counterterrorism, claimed nations around the world,
along with the United States, were "successfully waging this
campaign."
Salon Magazine points out that for George W. Bush, the public’s
belief that he can protect the country from terrorists is among
his last remaining strengths in recent polls that show him losing
the confidence of most voters -- and the White House is naturally
determined to preserve that advantage.
The report shines light on a president’s misguided
policies – or complete lack of policies altogether –
and whether or not the Bush administration is actually causing an
increase in terrorism through its actions. The constant use of the
words “terrorist” and “terrorism” are also
starting to be questioned.
Download
a copy of the inaccurate report as a pdf file.
The
report, which was released last April, was trumpeted by top administration
officials as a sign of the success of Bush’s war on terrorism.
The administration now admits that it was based on faulty data.
