Losing the War on Terror
Today, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice ordered the State Department to stop publishing the annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report.
Last year, President Bush used the 2003 report as evidence that his War on Terror was working. In it’s original edition, the report showed that terrorist attacks around the world had diminished since 2002. He quoted the report repeatedly on the campaign trail, up until the report was found to be incorrect. The corrected report showed that the number of terrorist attacks had risen to a 20 year high in 2003, one year after the beginning of the President’s war on terror.
This year’s report has worse news for the President:
…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.”
For two years in a row, this report has shown that Bush’s beloved War on Terror is not only failing, but may be making us much less safe than we were before the war.
I guess it’s not surprising that Condoleeza doesn’t want to be responsible for it anymore.
