Durr…It was a calculation error that led us to blatantly lie and report that the number of terrorist attacks was down in 2003 when in fact it was up more than ever before? So basically, the Bush administration puts out a baldface lie to make it seem like the war on terror, which is resulting in more rather than fewer terrorist attacks, is a success. When, of course, it is an utter failure. Major news networks, New York Times chief editor, how is this not front page news? When we’re lied to in a major way by the government, we deserve to know straight up, not find out in the middle of the damn paper. Many people just glance at the front page of papers, and not have seen this.
God damn…
I’m suspicious of the explanation myself, but Colin Powell made a very loud and public apology weeks ago about this. It was very widely reported, and on page one.
You’re not seeing it in today’s papers because it is old news.
Well, I’m a libera Bushbasher, and I think that, in an election year, and with a subject of such global importance, this should be investigated. If it can be proved that someone knowingly published falsified information, they should be jailed.
I started a thread about this a week ago, just after the State Department put out its revised report showing that the figures were not quite as rosy as originally thought.
I wasn’t so concerned with the fact that a mistake was made–these things happen, and even a leftist like me is not willing to chalk up every government misstep to the evil of the Bush administration.
What was of greater concern and greater import was the fact that Bush administration officials like Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage were so quick to jump on the earlier figures as evidence that the Bush “war on terror” was actually being won. Armitage said, after the first report came out:
Well, once the revised figures came out showing that the number of attacks and the number of injuries actually went up in 2003, the administration seemed a lot more cagey on whether these statistics were really indicative of the success of Bush’s policies.
(I cut and pasted extensive quotations, and links, in the linked thread, if you’re interested.)
Whenever I hear conservatives complain about the “liberal media bias,” I think of incidents like this and wonder what color the sky is in their world. It would be a novel visit just to hear news which doesn’t kowtow to the political and corporate leaders pulling their strings.
Even though this is old news, and Powell did have to apologize when it happened … it is pretty standard behavior for the US press to correct a glaring front page error with the smallest possible back page note. (And mis-reporting reality seems even more standard for the govt.)
For example, another thread reminded me of all the “a helicopter crashed in iraq today due to mechanical failure” headlines we have seen. A week after at least one of those “accidents”, I caught a bit on the underscreen ticker of one of the cable networks saying “a helicopter that was reported ‘crashed by accident’ last week has turned out to have been shot down by enemy fire.” By then the damage is done … the folks who only pay slight attention (majority of the voting public it seems) see the first (wrong) version and its left at that.
I’ll bet right now there are plenty of True Patriots ™ who still believe there was less terrorism in 2003.