Overdose
06-15-2004, 08:43 PM
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06152004/op...nion/175458.asp
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TUESDAY June 15, 2004
Reality check
Colin Powell has acknowledged that a State Department report was flat wrong in its claim that the number of terrorist attacks worldwide last year had declined precipitously. In fact, the opposite is true. Terrorist activity accelerated dramatically last year.
The secretary of state deserves credit for admitting that the report, issued in April, was erroneous, and pledging to correct it. But given the administration's and the CIA's earlier miscalculations about the threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, among other things, this latest failure to gather and report facts accurately is cause for deep concern.
According to Powell, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which compiles statistics from the CIA, FBI and other agencies, erred in collecting data, and the State Department failed to catch the mistakes. Apparently, the figures accounted for only part of 2003 rather than the whole year.
The political context of the report is important in this election year. The Bush administration, quite naturally, used the report to argue that its war on terrorism, including the invasion of Iraq, was working. It turns out now that the administration would be hard-pressed to claim that its strategy has been successful at suppressing terrorist attacks.
It would be closer to the mark to say that the U.S. war in Iraq has poured gasoline on the terrorist firestorm and painted for al-Qaida a best-selling recruiting poster. Hatred of the United States for its support of Israel and its invasion of Iraq is at an all-time high in Islamic nations generally and in the Arab nations in particular.
Secretary Powell emphatically denies that anybody "was out to cook the books" -- his words -- to show that Bush anti-terrorism policy was successful. Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., who had charged that the report was manipulated for political purposes, has accepted Powell's explanation.
It is encouraging that both the secretary and congressman are treating a serious matter of state in statesmanlike fashion. But putting political motivations aside does not remove the most serious question from the table.
Put simply, Americans must wonder how their government could issue a report saying that terrorist attacks were at their lowest level since 1969 when anyone who reads a newspaper or watches a television news broadcast daily would suspect that this could not possibly be true. This report did not pass the smell test, yet the folks at the State Department and elsewhere did not ask the questions necessary to expose obvious mistakes.
Either that, or someone in authority did not want to tell the administration what it did not want to hear. It seems that such denials of reality are happening frequently these days.
© Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune.
All material found on Utah Online is copyrighted The Salt Lake Tribune and associated news services. No material may be reproduced or reused without explicit permission from The Salt Lake Tribune.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TUESDAY June 15, 2004
Reality check
Colin Powell has acknowledged that a State Department report was flat wrong in its claim that the number of terrorist attacks worldwide last year had declined precipitously. In fact, the opposite is true. Terrorist activity accelerated dramatically last year.
The secretary of state deserves credit for admitting that the report, issued in April, was erroneous, and pledging to correct it. But given the administration's and the CIA's earlier miscalculations about the threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, among other things, this latest failure to gather and report facts accurately is cause for deep concern.
According to Powell, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which compiles statistics from the CIA, FBI and other agencies, erred in collecting data, and the State Department failed to catch the mistakes. Apparently, the figures accounted for only part of 2003 rather than the whole year.
The political context of the report is important in this election year. The Bush administration, quite naturally, used the report to argue that its war on terrorism, including the invasion of Iraq, was working. It turns out now that the administration would be hard-pressed to claim that its strategy has been successful at suppressing terrorist attacks.
It would be closer to the mark to say that the U.S. war in Iraq has poured gasoline on the terrorist firestorm and painted for al-Qaida a best-selling recruiting poster. Hatred of the United States for its support of Israel and its invasion of Iraq is at an all-time high in Islamic nations generally and in the Arab nations in particular.
Secretary Powell emphatically denies that anybody "was out to cook the books" -- his words -- to show that Bush anti-terrorism policy was successful. Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., who had charged that the report was manipulated for political purposes, has accepted Powell's explanation.
It is encouraging that both the secretary and congressman are treating a serious matter of state in statesmanlike fashion. But putting political motivations aside does not remove the most serious question from the table.
Put simply, Americans must wonder how their government could issue a report saying that terrorist attacks were at their lowest level since 1969 when anyone who reads a newspaper or watches a television news broadcast daily would suspect that this could not possibly be true. This report did not pass the smell test, yet the folks at the State Department and elsewhere did not ask the questions necessary to expose obvious mistakes.
Either that, or someone in authority did not want to tell the administration what it did not want to hear. It seems that such denials of reality are happening frequently these days.
© Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune.
All material found on Utah Online is copyrighted The Salt Lake Tribune and associated news services. No material may be reproduced or reused without explicit permission from The Salt Lake Tribune.
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