Statistics Don't Lie, Statisticians Do

As we at 2GL have recently noted, one of the difficulties of fighting a "War" against a concept (terror) is that it provides few yardsticks for progress. However, your President found one: the annual number of deadly terrorist attacks.

I am not certain that a reduced number of deadly terrorist attacks would be "clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against terror as your Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said recently.

In fact, I think if we are going to measure the effectiveness of the "War On The Concept Of Terror" we will have to ask people if they are more terrified now than they were prior to the "War." With all of the Bush Administration's terror warnings and scare talk, I doubt many of us are comforted. I'd venture to guess that "terror" in this country is at an all time high.

Nevertheless, back to the yardstick provided by your President for this "War." His Administration pointed to the most recent State Department "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report and cheered that the number of terrorist attacks had dropped to its lowest level in 34 years, declining by 45% since 2001!! Winning the "WAR"!!

Well, regardless of the accuracy of the yardstick, at least we're making progress there, right? Wrong.

The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration. ...
Several U.S. officials and terrorism experts familiar with that revision effort said the new report will show that the number of significant terrorist incidents increased last year, perhaps to its highest level in 20 years.