Posted by: catharine at January 23, 2006

OK. So on a previous post about Chomsky stating that the CIA metrics show that terrorism has gone up since 9/11 and Bush's so called "War on Terrorism" ... I have been looking for the metrics...

Interesting find: the CIA stopped keeping metrics after their botched job earlier this year and the fact that they show terrorism is increasing...

http://www.freemuslims.org/news/article.php?article=587
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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.
....
"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.
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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."

The intelligence officials requested anonymity because the information is classified and because, they said, they feared White House retribution.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002243262_terror16.html
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http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/2601/1/145/

Remember: Repubs are going to RUN ON THEIR RECORD ON THE WAR ON TERRORISM.... POINT OUT THAT THEIR RECORD SUCKS AND THAT TERRORISM HAS INCREASED ACCORDING TO THE CIA'S REPORTS. SIGNIFICANTLY.

Here's the larger text of what Johnson had to say about the fact that they are not reporting Terrorism statistics:

Rather than admit that the seventh floor at State was stunned by the figures, Phil Zelikow offers spin that this is a new effort that flows from the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. This my friends is pure, unadulterated horse manure. What is truly ironic is that although the 9-11 Commission called for greater coordination within the intelligence community and between the intelligence community and policymakers, it is Zelikow, the Commission's former Staff Director, who is leading the charge to hinder such cooperation. Here are the facts about how Patterns of Global Terrorism has been produced prior to this year:

Starting at least in June 1981, the CIA released a report titled, PATTERNS OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM: 1980. The CIA was responsible for collecting the data and writing the analysis. This was produced by the National Foreign Assessment Center. (I have one of the originals.)

http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2005/04/the_facts_about.html

"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.
...
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."