Condaleeza Rice sinks to a new low.

If there is one thing that the Bush Administration has been good at, it is manipulating information. They have become experts at ignoring data that opposes their cause, and welcoming data which supports their cause. There are lots of examples, just think of the lead up to the war in Iraq where we "knew", "without a doubt" that Saddam had WMD. Or global warming, where the Bush Administration would prefer to leave international organizations rather than acknowledge the fact. There are lots more examples as well, and they point to an Administration that acts solely on ideology, not on evidence. If the evidence contradicts their ideology, ideology triumphs.

Well Condaleeza Rice has joined in on the fun. Every year since the Reagan Administration, the State Department has released a report titled "Patterns of Global Terrorism." This report was a study of all the terrorist acts that had occurred in the previous years, and was valuable in quantifying terrorism, as well as determining trends, courses for action, etc. This report was the same one that caused some press last year, when the State Department had initially reported a downturn in terrorist attacks, and then later in the year had to revise the numbers because of errors in the original report. After the revision, the report showed that terrorist actions had increased last year, not decreased. This was of course an embarrassment to the Bush Administration, who has their own "reality" where the war on terrorism is a resounding success.

Well this years report was not looking good for Bush Administration either. It was looking like the number of Terrorist Incidents was going to have another increase over last year. So Condaleeza Rice did what any good Bush Administration lackey would do, she asked the report drafters to change their methodology so that the numbers would be lower. Fiddle the books in other words. To their credit, they refused to do so, and wanted to keep the same methodology that has been used since the reports inception in the Reagan years. Without that the report is useless, as the data is not comparable to previous years.

Unfortunately for us, that was not good enough for Rice. She just decided that if the drafters wouldn't fiddle the books, then the report should be shelved. So for the first time since the Reagan years, in the middle of the Bush Administration's "War on Terror", we will not have an analysis of the prevalence of terrorism in the world. The numbers just didn't mesh with the Bush Administration fictional "reality" where we are winning the war on terror, so instead of trying to figure out real solutions to the problem, we would rather just ignore the data and believe whatever the hell we want to believe.

Unbelievable!


here is a link!