Worsening Patterns of Global Terrorism

A State Department report showing an increase in terrorist attacks around the world last year has been altered to strip it of its pessimistic statistics.

The country-by-country report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, has been issued every year since 1986. This year's edition showed a big increase, from 172 significant terrorist attacks in 2003 to 655 in 2004, mostly because of attacks in Iraq.

Condi Rice has ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued, minus the statistics.

On the one hand, this shows the hypocrisy of classifying every attack on US forces as "terrorism". As one article says, "it's only terrorism when we say so". On the other hand, it also shows very clearly that Bush's "War On ... (ahem!)" is just not working. Which is hardly surprising because it was never a logical, intelligent or even vaguely rational agenda in the first place.

Democratic congressman Henry Waxman is calling for an investigation into the suppression of the report. Waxman says "there appears to be a pattern in the administration's approach to terrorism data: favorable facts are revealed while unfavorable facts are suppressed."

Well... um... Duh! Let's not forget how the State Department manipulated 2003 data in its "Patterns of Global Terrorism Report" to argue the United States was winning the war on terrorism.

The U.S. government later revised the figures, saying the number of people killed and wounded in terrorist attacks in 2003 was more than double what it had initially reported.

So there's the pattern: grab the headlines with "good" news then let the "bad" news trickle out weeks later on page 99b... The media is being played, and they are performing like hired stooges by letting this charade go on and on and on...