Monday, January 23, 2006

War On Terror Results

The Daily Kos, which I usually find a bit too biased has a very factual article on
The Real Truth About Bush's "War On Terror". It's well worth a read. It analyses some data from the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base.

The article says the number of terrorist attacks by year has increased as well as the number of fatalities. Looking at the database I see that it includes much more than just al Qaeda or other fundamentalist Muslim acts; that may or not be what you want to compare.

The article then goes on to point out errors (or lies) in Bush administration claims. In 2002 they claimed 62 cases of international terrorism were prosecuted. Turns out the real number was 1. 60 of those cited were middle eastern students cheating on an English proficiency exam to get into college. Last summer the administration claimed over 400 terrorists prosecuted. Turns out only 36 were prosecuted for terrorism, most of the others were for immigration or making false statements.

There's other stuff, but you get the point. When are we going to hold the administration responsible for not telling the truth, or more meaningfully, actually succeeding.

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