Spinelessness in the Bush WH: Trying to Hide the Rise in Global Terrorism

Well, The Daily Show will have plenty of material. I smell a Mess-o-potamia segment coming this week.

Well this wasn’t in those best laid plans…

The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week.

[snip]

Terrorist incidents in Iraq also dramatically increased, from 22 attacks to 198, or nine times the previous year’s total — a sensitive subset of the tally, given the Bush administration’s assertion that the situation there had stabilized significantly after the U.S. handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government last summer.

What a bunch of spineless jackasses they are.

Hey, Bush…if you’re so tough on terrorism, why can’t you take on this report like a man? Is it because even the bamboozler extraordinaires could not spin their way out of reality-based assessment?

“Last year was bad. This year is worse. They are deliberately trying to withhold data because it shows that as far as the war on terrorism internationally, we’re losing,” said Larry C. Johnson, a former senior State Department counterterrorism official, who first revealed the decision not to publish the data.

[…]

The administration aides sought to explain the rise in attacks as the result of more inclusive methodology in counting incidents, which they argued made year-to-year comparisons “increasingly problematic,” sources said.

Ah…when in doubt, blame the definition of terrorism!

Both Republican and Democratic aides at the meeting criticized what a GOP attendee called the “absurd” explanation offered by the State Department’s acting counterterrorism chief, Karen Aguilar, that the statistics are not relevant to the required report on trends in global terrorism. “It’s absurd to issue a report without statistics,” said the aide, who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “This is a self-inflicted wound by the State Department.”

Bipartisan political cover folks. Time for the Senate Democrats to start independent hearings. The Senate Dems have an investigative wing and can hold hearings. They aren’t official, but they can get news media coverage.

We can’t fight a war on terrorism properly if Americans don’t know how tough of a fight we’re in and don’t understand what we have to do. Then again, maybe the Bush administration just has no fucking clue.

Bush wouldn’t inspire the hatred he inspires if he would just level with the American people on this.

This isn’t like a blowjob from an intern and that kind of sticky situation. This is about how we’re handling this generation’s “Cold War.”

Well, if the Bush administration isn’t interested in putting out the stats or even doing a Friday dump, hey, we’ve got photos!

Caption: An Iraqi woman with a child peers through a shattered window of a destroyed car in Ramadi, 115 km (70 miles), west of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, April 26, 2005 after a roadside bomb exploded, destroying a civilian car. One Iraqi civilian was injured in the blast. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

In addition, Pace of Insurgent Attacks in Iraq Rises

The frequency of attacks is one measure of the strength of the insurgency in Iraq, and the success of the efforts of the U.S.-led coalition to combat it.

[…]

A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said post-invasion attacks in Iraq were at lower levels — 150 to 200 per week — until April 2004, when uprisings occurred in Najaf and Anbar province. The first pictures of tortured prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison were also made public that month.

Afterward, the rate of attacks doubled, to around 400 or more per week, the official said. The number spiked during U.S. offensives in Najaf in August and Fallujah in November.

In January, as Iraq prepared to hold its elections, the numbers increased to as high as 825 attacks in one week, the official said. Afterward, the number dropped again to 400 per week in February and 350 in March, leading to some hopes that the insurgency — a mix of Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists — was finally ebbing because of the elections.

About 60 people — including Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners — are injured or killed daily in attacks, the defense official said. Except for the spikes, that rate has remained roughly consistent since April 2004, the official said.

Sigh.

Well, a better Iraq photo:

Caption: An Iraqi woman receives shoes for her child from US Army soldier Cpt. Bill Shoment,163 InBn, from Bosman Montana, as other kids que for their turn, during a visit to a clinic in the village of Shmeryd near Hawija, nothern Iraq, Tuesday, April 26, 2005. More than 100 patients were checked by US army medical personel during one of the regular visits to local hospitals in Hawija area.(AP Photo/Sasa Kralj)