Doubts Fly on Terror Report's Reliability

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The State Department finds that flaws in what is supposed to be a definitive analysis of the global threat go much deeper than suspected.

WASHINGTON — Five months after embarrassed State Department officials acknowledged widespread mistakes in the government's influential annual report on global terrorism, internal investigators have found new and unrelated errors — as well as broader underlying problems that they say essentially have destroyed the credibility of the statistics the report is based on.

In a 28-page report, the State Department's Office of Inspector General blamed the problems on sloppy data collection, inexperienced employees, personnel shortages and lax oversight. Investigators also concluded that the procedures used by the State Department, CIA and other agencies to define terrorism and terrorist attacks were so inconsistent that they couldn't be relied upon.
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Those errors were fixed in a second version of the terrorism report, released June 22. But six Democratic senators, suggesting that the administration was manipulating terrorism statistics for election-year political gain, asked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to find out what had gone wrong, prompting the investigation by the inspector general. A copy of the inspector general's conclusions, marked "sensitive but unclassified", was obtained by The Times.
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But investigators identified more systemic shortcomings, particularly a long-standing failure by the State Department, CIA and other agencies to use consistent standards to identify and classify terrorism-related events.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror21nov21,0,3602584.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[pinerow]

1. For some reason, I am not surprised...

nt

[Rose Siding]

2. Screw ups in the Bush admin? This can only mean one thing...

Promotions all around!!! :party: :bounce: WOO HOO!!!

[Ms_Mary]

9. It reminds me of SNL's skit last night

where W is telling Colin he doesn't fit in because he is the only one who knows anything about war, etc.

[Cocoa]

3. Condi won't tolerate this kind of incompetence

hahahahahahaha I crack myself up.

[TahitiNut]

5. She'll stop at nothing less than world class incompetence.

As soon as possible if not sooner.

[Rose Siding]

4. It's hard...

"It's not always easy. The numbers themselves don't always mean a great deal. They have to be put in context," Kraft said. "Even with the best of efforts — and a lot of time and work goes into it — there is always going to be a certain amount of fuzziness."

"It's not always easy"....it's HARD...."a lot of time and work goes into it"...it's HARD!!!

[TahitiNut]

8. Well, it's obvious ... this is the

... Viagra adminstration. It's harder longer than ever before.

[Ardee]

6. The purpose of Intelligence

under Bush is not to unearth accurate information but to justify premade decisions and act as an arm of the propaganda machine.

I heard the other day, on a Pacifica radio program, that Al- Zarkawi, the terrorist who made the invasion of Fallujah necessary, has been dead since March! Apparently fifteen separate groups in the middle east have reported this while claiming that the letters and statements from him since are obvious forgeries....just one example of "intelligence".....

[asjr]

10. Aha! That is why he keeps getting away.

It is just another way of keeping the citizens afraid.

[Old and In the Way]

7. The problem is, they start with a preconceived notion of what

the problems/realities are.....and then try to make the data fit their conclusions. Long term, this reality distortion will do us in...

[Rose Siding]

12. Yet when they're busted nothing sticks

I just don't get it. The repubs could exploit the hell out of a dem blunder like this, but with a vast bubbling swamp of similar bushie screw-ups, dems *still* can't grab the spotlight.

[Moderator]

11. Locking--this was first reported several days ago