The Facts Behind the NIE by Larry C Johnson

[ProSense]

Tuesday, 26 September 2006

The Facts Behind the NIE

by Larry C Johnson

Although the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) regarding Iraq and terrorism is still classified (UPDATE: The Key Judgments are now declassified and can be found at this link), the data behind the findings is not and has been publicly available for three years. I have written repeatedly on this fact and it has been, I am told, the judgment of the intelligence community for at least two years. The statistics on terrorist activity, until this year, were published in the State Department's annual report on terrorism (Patterns of Global Terrorism). The Bush Administration tried to not publish the report last year because the data showed an unprecedented surge in international terrorist attacks. The following chart shows the bad news (it is based on the statistics collected by the CIA and supplied to the Department of State):



A "Significant" terrorist incident is one in which a person was killed, wounded or kidnapped (or there was property damage in excess of $10,000). The statistics tell a very clear and simple story (I bet someone who can read My Pet Goat can figure it out).

* The total number of international terrorist incidents, both significant and non-significant, declined until 2002.
* The number of significant incidents increased steadily starting in 1992.
* Most of the significant incidents were caused by radical Islamic extremists.
* 2004 marked the single, largest increase in terrorist activity ever recorded since the CIA started keeping records dating back to 1968.
* The four fold increase in significant terrorist incidents (attacks in which people were killed and wounded) was a direct consequence of the war in Iraq. All you have to do is look at the attacks recorded and the people killed and wounded in those attacks. Iraq and India were the big targets in 2004.

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/09/the_facts_behin.html

PDF also at Talking Points.

[rzemanfl]

1. Link doesn't work. Typical of our government. n/t

[ProSense]

2. Works for me, but try

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com

[rzemanfl]

4. Post looks totally different to me. I know it was edited but there

were two links, as I recall.

[ProSense]

5. Still there, but didn't

want to start a new thread to post the Larry Johnson info.

[ProSense]

3. OP edited! n/t