Tuesday, April 26, 2005

LAURA OVER AT WAR AND PIECE has an important follow-up post about the surge in terrorist attacks in 2004, first reported in connection with the State Department publication that was suppressed by Condoleezza Rice after it showed that the number of such attacks last year was the highest since 1985.

Now there is an article on the MSNBC website saying that Larry Johnson, a former intelligence officer, revealed in his blog last week that the number of terrorist incidents in 2004 was up to 655 from a count of 172 the year before. As Laura points out, this number is three times the number of such attacks in 2003.

From the MSNBC article:

The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate about whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said Tuesday.

The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed Monday on the numbers by U.S. State Department and intelligence officials.
[...]
Former intelligence official Larry Johnson first disclosed the new figures when he wrote in his Web log last week that the 2004 numbers would rise to at least 655 from about 172 in 2003.

Since MSNBC does not provide a link to Larry Johnson's blog, I googled it. Here it is; here is Johnson's post about the new figures; and here is a post from today quoting the entire letter that Rep. Henry Waxman sent to Condoleezza Rice concerning her decision to withhold these figures, and the State Department report, from the American public.

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