Keeping Iraq attack numbers under wraps

December 16, 2006

As Justin Rood noted, this chart, produced by the Government Accountability Office, tracks the number of per-months attacks in Iraq, based on Pentagon data.

attacks

A close look at the chart, however, notes that a few details are missing — specifically, the number of attacks in September, October, and November of this year, despite the fact that the report having been produced in December.

So, where are those numbers? Rood called Joseph Christoff, the GAO official who produced the document, who said he had all of the data, but had to leave the report incomplete because the Pentagon classified the numbers.

The number of attacks from August 2006, and every month prior, are publicly available, but the fall of 2006 has to remain classified? Without explanation?

Of course, this does fit nicely into the Bush administration’s m.o. — when data is inconvenient, hide it.

* In March, the administration announced it would no longer produce the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which identifies which programs best assist low-income families, while also tracking health insurance coverage and child support.

* In 2005, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism.

* After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings.

* When an annual report called “Budget Information for States” showed the federal government shortchanging states in the midst of fiscal crises, Bush’s Office of Management and Budget announced it was discontinuing the report, which some said was the only source for comprehensive data on state funding from the federal government.

* When Bush’s Department of Education found that charter schools were underperforming, the administration said it would sharply cut back on the information it collects about charter schools.

When government reports conflict with the White House’s, the Bush gang has a choice — deal with the problem or change the reports. Guess which course they prefer?

Hey, they’re creating their own reality, since the “true” reality doesn’t fit with their mindsets.

  • It’s funny how Al Gore’s co-opting the phrase “An Inconvenient Truth” limits those words to describing only a small portion of the Bush Administration’s War on Reality. For Bush, all truth is inconvenient, because as Stephen Colbert so eloquently said, “Truth has a liberal bias.”

  • Doesn’t this imply the Admin. had decided things will get progressively worse in all of these areas? Data like this would come in handy to support claims of success or improvement. If they aren’t collecting the data they must think there will no success to report.

    I’d say it is time to whip out the FOIA requests but from Day One, the Bush Admin. has been very FOIA unfriendly.

  • The Brookings Institution seems to have a lot of monthly data of all kinds, right up through November. I don’t know they can be used to flesh out the missing (suppressed) data, but might be worth a look (click on “Security Indicators” to the list of data available.

  • September, October and November of this year were the months leading up to the midterm elections. Does anyone else think this is just a coincidence?

  • Add the closings of the EPA libraries to the list of paving over ther inconvenient truths, CB.

    We won’t be counting the insurgent attacks against us anymore; instead, we’ll be counting our attacks against insurgents (with full body count). Wouldn’t do to have more of the former than the latter.

    I wonder if it’s too late to award Orwell a posthumous Nobel Prize for prescient literature; between his Animal Farm and his 1984, he really nailed our current regime to a T.

  • Petorado, it should be noted that Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” begins with the word “An”—which designates the “Global Warming” Truth as but one of a potential many. He doesn’t call it “The Inconvenient Truth,” so the total phrase isn’t co-opted. All of the other facts pertaining to Herr Bush’s administration can be properly labeled as “Yet Another Inconvenient Truth.”

    And I’m fairly certain that the REAL President of the United States wouldn’t mind one little bit….

  • This reminds me of a bad old computer programmer’s joke: if the program result doesn’t accurately represent reality, change reality.

  • What’s to stop other agencies from producing the missing reports? The Bush administration didn’t forbid collecting and publishing the data (yet), it simply announced it would discontinue doing so itself. After all, your money is better spent in taking over other people’s countries and giving tax breaks to America’s most obscenely wealthy.

    Seriously, the Internet and simple desktop computer power have made it possible for someone outside of government to collect, compile and publish comprehensive reports using information available in the public domain. How ridiculous would The Deciderer’s regime look if they posited that data about programs that assist low-income families must be classified for reasons of national security? I’m not suggesting looking foolish would stop them from doing it – it’s never stopped them before. But every time they do something abysmally stupid and childish, they lose a little more of the base. Eventually (some say now), all that’ll be left is foam-flecked stary-eyed whackjobs.

    It’s plain that picking up the slack on what the public could reasonably expect to know is being increasingly left to the public. If you think people should know, tell ’em!

  • This is quite a list, one major item you can add to this list is this – The Bush Admin stopped reporting the M3 report, this is a report on how much money the Fed is printing. They have their machines running 24/7… It makes a person wonder if there is a connection between the gobbs of money that is being printed and the companies that have investments in the stock market… Thanks for lettiing me comment, Jan

  • Remember the old joke behind the Cone of Silence from Get Smart?

    Everyone on the outside of the Cone of Silence could hear the people inside the cone just fine while the ones stuck inside the Cone of Silence couldn’t hear a thing from either the inside or the outside, or hear what the other person was saying or planning to do, all due to being inside – the Cone of Silence.

    What news you can’t hear, hear in detail, or are kept from skeptically questioning those pushing it, that news you can’t complain about. And even if you tried to complain about an ugly discovery, nobody inside the CONTROL cone can hear you speaking.

    What things you don’t track with the information gathering power of government agencies, you don’t have to worry about in policy even if these things go nova. That’s the Bush administration reasoning.

    However, the entire outside world knows about the many Bush administration, neocon inspired screw-up endeavors. The only ones that don’t here about these failures are the people here in the United States trapped their right-wing Cone of Silence.

    Frankly, if it wasn’t for a little critical thinking, some actual hard news being reported, and the bandwidth of an independent community of reporting and commentary on the internet which did manage to trickle out some factual news unexpectedly from some websites after 9/11, the corporate and wealthy far right interests in this country would still have Congress and the country under lock and key isolation. All of us would still be caught in their small, clear plastic TV bubble of politically bias and inaccurate sound bite information coming from Fox News pundits. The internet broke the back of the right-wing media Cone of Silence.

    But the Bush administration assault on critical thinking, freedom of speech, and their reluctance to track problem issues continues.

  • “SIMPLE STARE TREASON!”

    The Saudi-born man known-as “OSAMA BIN-LADEN” was-executed in-the mid to late 80’s & replaced by a blackmailed drug-phucked boy-loving (They-had films of-him) “AUATRALIAN-BORN MAN” of Dutch descent who’s birthname was “PETER WILLIAM VANSTONE!”

    The-man known-as “MOHHAMED-ATTA” was directly-involved with-the “GANDA OBSCENITY” back-in 1984 where he-was part of-an ‘ATTEMPTED ENTRAPMENT’ by “DONALD RUMSFELD” on-myself!

    Now do you-reckon that 17-years after being-involved in-the ‘TREASONOUS MURDER OF NEARLY 200 fine-soldiers & TRUE PATRIOTS’ that-the “CIA” had-just ‘LOST-TRACK OF-HIM?’ Really?

    Nah! State-Treason! Checkout my blogsite 4-more! “TRUTH” & a “WORDPROCESSOR” are-my weapons!

    Robby Daniel

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