Did you know that when Congress had its closed door session to look at the rest of the torture photos from Abu Ghraib, that they saw over 1800 photos?

1800?

Doesn't that number by itself dispel the notion that this was an aberration, that it was rogue soldiers?

1800 photos?

People don't casually take nearly 2G photos. 

No, sir, nothing systemic here.  No one told those people to take 1800 pictures. 

9:54:27 AM    comment []

This piece in the Washington Post today is not going to get much attention, I imagine.  It investigates the claims made in the State Department's annual terror report.  Here's the key section:

"You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight," said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. As evidence, the "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report says that worldwide terrorism dropped by 45 percent between 2001 and 2003. The report even boasts that the number of terrorist acts committed last year "represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969."

Yet, a careful review of the report and underlying data supports the opposite conclusion: The number of significant terrorist acts increased from 124 in 2001 to 169 in 2003 -- 36 percent -- even using the State Department's official standards. The data that the report highlights are ill-defined and subject to manipulation -- and give disproportionate weight to the least important terrorist acts. The only verifiable information in the annual reports indicates that the number of terrorist events has risen each year since 2001, and in 2003 reached its highest level in more than 20 years.

In essence, it boils down to this:  the Administration is telling yet another lie about the number of terrorist attacks in the world, fudging facts to make it seem as though terrorism is on the decline due to the war on terror.

Now, I'm going to temporarily suspend my partisanship and be clear here:  the best measure of the success of the war on terror is not the number of attacks that have occurred, but rather the number of attacks that have been prevented.  It's impossible to measure that, of course, but based on the near universal opinion that Al Qaeda has suffered many serious organizational and leadership setbacks, it's probably safe to say that there has been a lot of disruption in planning, at least of larger, cataclysmic attacks.  The fact that there is a lot of terrorism doesn't, on its face, speak to the success or failure of the GWOT.

(Partisanship back on now.)

Even so, isn't it disturbing (if not at all surprising) that they're fudging the numbers?  I honest to god do not know how those outside of the religious right can support Bush anymore (assuming those who are paying attention, of course). 

I don't think we're winning the war on terrorism, though there's little question that we've done good work against Al Qaeda's leadership.  My basis for this, as I've said many, many times, has little to do with the number of attacks and everything to do with the way we're potentially creating more terrorists by remaking the US into--in Fareed Zakaria's words--an international outlaw.  It's a two-front war, remember.

But, winning or losing, this basic refusal to accurately state the facts is grotesque.

9:23:47 AM    comment []