snip:
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).
snip:
If key members of Congress (like Majority Leader Bill Frist, who claimed ignorance of this report), and neither the House nor the Senate intelligence committees, have seen the document since it was produced in April, then we have to ask ourselves whether the White House and Congress take any serious interest in the most important products of America's enormous (and extremely expensive) intelligence empire. Are we to conclude that the "brains" of the United States Government (presumably those who formulate and carry out national policy) are simply not interested in making use of the best information and advice available to them? That seems to confirm the growing impression that policy is influenced today more by considerations of ideology and political expediency than by painstaking and objective study of the world situation.
much more:
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/09/the_facts_behin.html#more