by James Glaser
June 23, 2004

I heard it today on National Public Radio, "2003, worst year for terrorism in twenty years." It wasn't that long ago that J.Cofer Black, the State Department counter terrorism coordinator, had said the terrorism had been brought down to its lowest level in decades. He said that was a "remarkable achievement."

Of course Black was looking at a State Department Official Report on terrorism that according to Colin Powell had "errors in the way the data was being added up."

Today that same State Department said that global terrorism in 2003 killed or wounded more than twice as many people as the department had reported earlier. This new report didn't come to light because the Bush Administration realized that they had made a mistake, no they did the new report, because they got caught in another lie and had to come out with the truth.

According to the International Herald Tribune, in an article written by Brian Knowlton, "The revised report said that 3,646 people were wounded in terror attacks last year, more than double the 1,593 cited in April, and a substantial increase from the 2,013 in 2002."

The report sent out to the Nation in April was used to show that Bush's policies were working, now they are saying nothing about what this "real" report means, President Bush said, "we are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization," last September 8th. Well now we find out we weren't.

Even though the Bush administration claims that it is terrorists who are killing and wounding our troops in Iraq, their numbers were not used for this report and would have raised the numbers much higher.

This last week the 9/11 Commission said that there was no credible connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. This weekend the White House came out with a story of how there was a Lieutenant Colonel in Saddam's army, who was also a prominent member of al Qaeda.

That sounded pretty convincing, at least it did until today, when it was reported that the name of the man the Administration was calling Al Qaeda, wasn't even spelled the same as the man that was al Qaeda. One administration said, "By most reckoning that would be someone else." He added that the identification issue is still being studied, but "it doesn't look like a match to most analysts."

I am writing about the most powerful government in the world. Time after time this government, our government, has been caught in either out and out lies or at the best, misinformation. They know what they are doing and they know when they put out false reports to make themselves look good. What I don't understand is why they can't be honest? Why lie to us?

America can't keep a President in office, who lets this type of behavior continue. George Bush and his people are not only lying to us, but to the whole world and the world knows it. Again Bush tarnishes our reputation.

Today George Bush was telling the Nation and the world that he did not allow torture of prisoners in Iraq and that he never would. He released a whole stack of papers as proof. When the administration was asked if those papers were everything the administration had on torture, they had to say no. They cherry picked the papers they released to make George Bush look good.

By playing games with the papers released, they make it look like they are hiding something. These people are not even good at lying or giving out misinformation. They have been guilty so many times now, if they ever do start to tell the truth, no one will believe them.