20
Apr
Scott McClellan won’t talk to me anymore
Is it over so soon? I must’ve said something wrong the last time I talked to Scott, because today, when I tried to get his attention during the White House press briefing, he wouldn’t even look at me. Thirty-five minutes into the briefing he abruptly said, “Thank you,” and that was that — I was one of three people whose raised arms went unrequited. Oh well, maybe I’ll start a series of Questions the White House Would Rather Not Answer. The first in the series:
For the past nine years, the State Department’s annual report on global terrorism has included data such as the number of terrorist attacks, how many people were killed, etc. Recently, Secretary of State Rice has ordered that that information be deleted from the Year 2004 report. Is the White House privy to such information, and, if so, did terrorism increase or decrease last year?
Just in case Scott didn’t know the answer, I was ready to supply it:
The Seattle Times has reported that the National Counterterrorism Center has informed the State Department that there were 625 “significant” terrorist attacks in 2004. This is three times higher than the previous year’s figure. Has this increase caused the President to question the effectiveness of his ‘War on Terror?’
To my dismay, though, Scott only had eyes for others today. There were six questions on Bush’s moribund National Energy Policy, four on the moribund Bolton nomination, and one on what would Bush think if the new Pope excommunicated Barbara Mikulski (this last from the inimitable Les Kinsolving, of course).
So if you want information on how effective our government’s anti-terrorism efforts have been, don’t ask the government. It doesn’t want you to know. Instead, ask BTC News. In Weldon’s last post, he gave you data on the number of deaths due to terrorism. Here are data on the number of terrrorist attacks that occurred worldwide during the last 10 years:
As an ironic side note, neither of these data sets includes deaths or attacks that happened in Iraq, which, according to President Bush, is “the central front of the war on terror.”
The Bush administration may be the most secretive ever, but it can’t hide the evidence of its poor performance.
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the question remains though (and not that I’m siding with the WH) but doesn’t it really matter? is putting this all in the aggregate the same problem as having a generic “War on Terror”? the idea that “Terrorism” is and everywhere the same is a construct that has been hammered by the WH and is basically meaningless. I would think that any global count would be as meaningless.
April 24th, 2005 at 5:14 amOf course you’re right, christopher. I’m not really complaining that the Bush administration isn’t doing enough to fight ‘terror.’ Just pointing out that, based on their own moronic criteria, they are failing (actually, from their point of view, this putative failure is really success, for if terrorism really disappeared they would lose their biggest political asset).
April 26th, 2005 at 1:39 pmmy
father was a veteran of 4 wars and during this time i contracted polio. during this time the only thing that my family had wan ft. benning , ga/ I could have been sent to warm spring,ga. but my parents were told that the military would take care of their own. well now i am left with a prt of a life. i need th be part of his va benefits please help me or does our government not care. since apparantly my fathers service does not matter. Your system conviently lost my medical records. I do know that you have micro-film and micro-fish please help mefather was a veteran of 4 wars. during this
May 14th, 2005 at 4:10 am[…] Despite your opponents, you have prevailed. You have been able to develop a strong stance on terrorism. Andyour plan has worked. The proof is here. […]
July 21st, 2005 at 4:17 am