You’ve probably never read Patterns of Global Terrorism. Published once a year for the last two years, this State Department report provides detailed statistics on the frequency of terrorist activity around the world.
The White House loved this report last April. They even used statistics from it to support the President’s election-year claim that his policies were making progress in the War on Terror. Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State) said, “You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight.”
Two months later, the State Department quietly revised that report, revealing a higher number of significant terrorist attacks and twice the number of fatalities due to terrorist activity.
This year, State Department sources told Knight-Ridder newspapers the same report indicates there were more terrorist acts in 2004 than in any year since the report has been published. Specifically, the State Department’s own report documents 625 significant acts of terror during 2004.
That’s up from 175 incidents in 2003.
That’s an increase of more than 350%.
(And those statistics don’t even count acts of terror against our troops in Iraq, though as recently as last week Bush called Iraq “a central front in the war on terror!)
In what is, I’m sure, a completely unrelated story: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office has ordered the report discontinued. According to a senior State Department official, Patterns on Global Terrorism 2004 will never see the light of day; in its place, lawmakers can expect a new report “without statistical data.”
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