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Banned
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What Do You KNOW About The Status of Post War Iraq or of the War on Terror?
Please read this post before you reply.
I have presented the current story concerning the news report that the Bush administration has decided
to stop publishing the yearly report on terrorism, and the reports surrounding the release and revision
of last year's report.
I have presented references from reliable sources that report that the Bush administration assessments
and reporting on key matters, the status of the direction of global terrorism, the progress in training of Iraqi
security forces, the status/progress of Iraqi electrical energy production, (after $1 billion has been spent to
increase it.) and the Bush restatements of the mission in Iraq.
What is it that Bush administration supporters or apologists, "know" that enables them to defend or support
the Bush admin. with such certainty ? What am I missing ? Am I "over researching", instead of accepting Bush admin.
PR at face value? Are all the conflicting reports, the ones that indicate that the war on terrorism is being lost,
that there are no reliable figures concerning the progress of Iraqi security force training, and that Iraq produced
less megawatts of power recently, than it did the week after the invasion, two years ago, to be ignored ?
Bottomline.....is there a point when you will become concerned that your support of Bush and his admin.'s policies will undermine your own credibility ? What has this administration been correct about ?
Quote:
<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002243262_terror16.html">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002243262_terror16.html</a>
Saturday, April 16, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.
U.S. eliminates annual terrorism report
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON — The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's
top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the
publication covered.
Several U.S. officials defended the decision, saying the methodology used by the National Counterterrorism Center to generate
statistics had flaws, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.
But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered the report,
"Patterns of Global Terrorism," eliminated weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the
Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.
"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public,
" charged Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the
publication was eliminated, but said the allegation that it was done for political reasons was "categorically untrue."
According to Johnson and U.S. intelligence officials, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided to the State Department
reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004. That compared with 175 such incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.
The statistics didn't include attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called
"a central front in the war on terror."
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2003/31569.htm">http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2003/31569.htm</a>
Patterns of Global Terrorism -2003
Released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
April 29, 2004
The Year in Review
There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, and
a drop of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international
terrorist attacks since 1969.
A total of 307 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, far fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 1,593 persons
were wounded in the attacks that occurred in 2003, down from 2,013 persons wounded the year before.
In 2003, the highest number of attacks (70) and the highest casualty count (159 persons dead and 951 wounded) occurred in Asia.
There were 82 anti-US attacks in 2003, which is up slightly from the 77 attacks the previous year, and represents a 62-percent
decrease from the 219 attacks recorded in 2001.
Thirty-five American citizens died in 15 international terrorist attacks in 2003:
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5202007/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5202007/</a>
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to this report on "Global Terrorism," your credibility being called into question.
This is your deputy secretary of State, Richard Armitage, in April.
(Videotape, April 29, 2004):
MR. RICHARD ARMITAGE (Deputy Secretary of State): Indeed you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: "In the fight on terrorism." And the report says this: "There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003,
a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, a drop-off of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks.
The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969." And then two professors
from Princeton took a look at this, and from Stanford, and they concluded this: "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 only verifiable information in the annual reports indicates that the number
of terrorist events has risen each year since 2001, and in 2003 it reached its highest level in more than 20 years."
Henry Waxman, the Democratic congressman of California, said that you are manipulating data for political purposes.
SEC'Y POWELL: Well, we're not. The data in our report is incorrect. If you read the narrative of the report, it makes it clear
that the war on terror is a difficult one, and that we're pursuing it with all of the means at our disposal. But something happened
in the data collection, and we're getting to the bottom of it. Teams have been working for the last several days and all weekend long.
I'll be having a meeting in the department tomorrow with CIA, other contributing agencies, the Terrorist Threat Information Center,
and my own staff to find out how these numbers got into the report. Some cutoff dates were shifted from the way it was done in the past.
There's nothing political about it. It was a data collection and reporting error, and we'll get to the bottom of it and we'll issue a
corrected report. And I've talked to Congressman Waxman.
MR. RUSSERT: Was it CIA data?
SEC'Y POWELL: It's a combination of data that flows in, and some of it is CIA. The Terrorist Threat Information Center compiles data,
provides it to us. But when you look at it in hindsight now, and you look at the analysis given to me by Congressman Waxman and these
two congressmen, all sorts of alarm bells should have gone off. All sorts of, as I say to my staff, circuit breakers should have dropped
when we saw this data, and they didn't. But I don't think there was anything political or policy driven about it. It was just data that
was incorrect, or it wasn't properly measured compared to the way it was measured in previous years. And so what we have to do is normalize
the data this past year, 2003, in the same way that we normalized data in previous years, and we will be putting out that corrected information
as fast as we can.
MR. RUSSERT: But it is embarrassing.
SEC'Y POWELL: Very embarrassing. I am not a happy camper over this. We were wrong.
MR. RUSSERT: You know, you take this report on terrorism, and the last time you were here about a month ago, Mr. Secretary, I asked about your
presentation to the United Nations, and this is what you said.
(Videotape, May 16, 2004):
SEC'Y POWELL: But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong, and in some cases deliberately misleading. And for that I am
disappointed, and I regret it.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Inaccurate, wrong, deliberately misleading on WMD. And then this report on terrorism. Why shouldn't the American people lose all confidence in the information their government is giving them from the CIA about weapons of mass destruction, about terrorism, and who knows what else?
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2003/33771.htm">http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2003/33771.htm</a>
Patterns of Global Terrorism -2003
Released by the Bureau of Resource Management
Released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
June 22, 2004
The Year in Review (Revised)
Link for previously released Year in Review
There were 208 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight increase from the most recently published figure of 198* attacks in 2002,
and a 42 percent drop from the level in 2001 of 355 attacks.
A total of 625 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 3646 persons were wounded in the
attacks that occurred in 2003, a sharp increase from 2013 persons wounded the year before. This increase reflects the numerous indiscriminate
attacks during 2003 on “soft targets,” such as places of worship, hotels, and commercial districts, intended to produce mass casualties.
Thirty-five U.S. citizens died in international terrorist attacks in 2003:
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomplishments/electricity.html">http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomplishments/electricity.html</a>
Electricity
USAID's goals include the emergency repair or rehabilitation of power generation facilities and electrical grids. Teams of engineers
from the Ministry of Electricity, USAID and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been working since May of 2003 to restore the capacity
to Iraq's power system.
Major Accomplishments to Date:
* By October, 2003, rehabilitated electric power capacity to produce peak capacity greater than the pre-war level of 4,400 MW.
By October, 2003, rehabilitated electric power capacity to produce peak capacity greater than the pre-war level of 4,400 MW.
Hit 5,365 MW on August 18, 2004.
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/11151382.htm">http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/11151382.htm</a>
Before U.S. bombing knocked out 60 percent of Iraq's generation capacity in the 1990-91 Gulf War, Iraq churned out as much as
9,000 megawatts of electricity a day, Iraqi power officials have said. After Saddam hurriedly patched the grid,
it produced around 4,400 daily megawatts.
U.S. engineers promised to increase production to 6,000 megawatts of consistent power by last June.
Instead, the reverse happened. On March 4, a U.S. reconstruction official said that just 3,850 megawatts were generated the previous day.
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2005/20050408_524.html">http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2005/20050408_524.html</a>
Trained and equipped Iraqi security forces number 152,617, divided between the ministries of interior and defense, according to
U.S. State Department April 6 statistics. The 66,895 soldiers in the Iraqi army, 186 in the air force and 521 in the Iraqi navy
come under the purview of the Ministry of Defense.
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush13apr13,1,7662302.story?ctrack=1&cset=true">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush13apr13,1,7662302.story?ctrack=1&cset=true</a>
Although Bush's figure for trained Iraqi forces was in line with the Pentagon tally of 152,617, the Government Accountability Office
had cast doubt on the administration figures. In March, the watchdog agency said the Pentagon, when tallying the number of trained
and equipped Iraqi troops, had included "tens of thousands" of police officers who were absent without leave.
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.gao.gov/htext/d05431t.html">http://www.gao.gov/htext/d05431t.html</a>
What GAO Found:...........
U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to
which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped. As of late
February 2005, the State Department reported that about 82,000 police
forces under the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and almost 60,000 military
forces under the Iraqi Ministry of Defense have been trained and
equipped. However, the reported number of Iraqi police is unreliable
because the Ministry of Interior does not receive consistent and
accurate reporting from the police forces around the country. The data
does not exclude police absent from duty. Further, the departments of
State and Defense no longer report on the extent to which Iraqi
security forces are equipped with their required weapons, vehicles,
communications equipment, and body armor.
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030322.html">http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030322.html</a>
President Discusses Beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom
President's Radio Address
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. American and coalition forces have begun a concerted campaign
against the regime of Saddam Hussein. In this war, our coalition is broad, more than 40 countries
from across the globe. Our cause is just, the security of the nations we serve and the peace of the world.
And our mission is clear, to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support
for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050112-7.html">http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050112-7.html</a>
Q The President accepts that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, he said back in October that the comprehensive report by Charles Duelfer concluded what
his predecessor had said, as well, that the weapons that we all believed were there, based on the intelligence,
were not there. And now what is important is that we need to go back and look at what was wrong with much of the
intelligence that we accumulated over a 12-year period and that our allies had accumulated over that same period
of time, and correct any flaws.
Q I just want to make sure, though, because you said something about following up on additional reports and learning
more about the regime. You are not trying to hold out to the American people the possibility that there might still
be weapons somewhere there, are you?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I just said that if there are -- if there are any other reports, obviously, of weapons of mass
destruction, then people will follow up on those reports. I'm just stating a fact.
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Now....the revised message as to why we are in Iraq:
Quote:
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/politics/12cnd-bush.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/politics/12cnd-bush.html</a>
"From the beginning, our goal in Iraq has been to promote Iraqi independence by helping the Iraqi people establish a free country
that can sustain itself, rule itself, and defend itself," Mr. Bush said. "And in the last two years, Iraqis have made enormous progress
toward that goal."
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