Damage Report

From The Washington Post:

The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week.

Overall, the number of what the U.S. government considers "significant" attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the record of around 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides who were briefed on statistics covering incidents...

Terrorist incidents in Iraq also dramatically increased, from 22 attacks to 198, or nine times the previous year's total...

The State Department announced last week that it was breaking with tradition in withholding the statistics on terrorist attacks from its congressionally mandated annual report. ...

The controversy comes a year after the State Department retracted its annual terrorism report and admitted that its initial version vastly understated the number of incidents. ...

"Last year was bad. This year is worse. They are deliberately trying to withhold data because it shows that as far as the war on terrorism internationally, we're losing," said Larry C. Johnson, a former senior State Department counterterrorism official, who first revealed the decision not to publish the data. ...

[Karen] Aguilar (State Department acting counterterrorism chief), according to Hill aides, told them that Rice decided to withhold the statistics on the recommendation of her counselor, Philip D. Zelikow. He was executive director of the Sept. 11 commission that investigated the terrorist attacks on the United States. ...

Under the standards used by the government, "significant" terrorist attacks are defined as those that cause civilian casualties or fatalities or substantial damage to property. Attacks on uniformed military personnel such as the large number of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq are not included.

The data provided to the congressional aides also showed terrorist attacks doubling over the previous year in Afghanistan, to 27 significant incidents, and in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, where attacks rose to about 45, from 19 the year before. Also occurring last year were such deadly attacks as the seizure of a school in Beslan, Russia, by Chechen militants that resulted in at least 330 dead, and the Madrid train bombings that left nearly 200 dead.

"It is not the lack of democracy that produced jihadist movements, nor will the creation of democracies quell them. … The president is right that resentment is growing and that it is breeding terrorism, but it is chiefly resentment of us, not of the absence of democracy."

--Richard Clarke, New York Times Magazine