Thursday, June 10, 2004
2003 Terrorism Figures To Be Revised Upward
At the request of Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), the State Department is revising the numbers used in its last terrorism report, which I cited here last month. And it looks like the upward revision is going to be significant--possibly even reflecting an increase in the number of terrorist incidents over prior year levels.
What's sad is that a couple of professors figured this out almost a month ago. I was suspicious of their motives at the time, but their claims were verifiable, and I wrote that the media should be asking some pointy questions of the State Department.
But the media--the same bunch of professionals who didn't look into the numbers in the original State Department report to notice that no terrorist event in the month of december December was included, and and who haven't bothered to look into the Iraqi Body Count project's dubious methodology, also didn't bother to verify these professor's claims themselves--even though the professors led them to the report's discrepencies by the nose. They abdicated their responsibility, and left it to Rep. Waxman's office.
Well, kudos to Alan Krueger and David Laitin for some good heads-up work. And kudos to Representative Waxman for following up.
We'll see what the final report says, along with what explainations they have for the discrepency. But if a publicly traded corporation was busted on an earnings statement like that, the SEC would be all over them like a pit bull on a porkchop.
Splash, out
Jason
UPDATE: The first draft of this post incorrectly refers to Waxman as a Senator. I have corrected the text and regret the error.
What's sad is that a couple of professors figured this out almost a month ago. I was suspicious of their motives at the time, but their claims were verifiable, and I wrote that the media should be asking some pointy questions of the State Department.
But the media--the same bunch of professionals who didn't look into the numbers in the original State Department report to notice that no terrorist event in the month of december December was included, and and who haven't bothered to look into the Iraqi Body Count project's dubious methodology, also didn't bother to verify these professor's claims themselves--even though the professors led them to the report's discrepencies by the nose. They abdicated their responsibility, and left it to Rep. Waxman's office.
Well, kudos to Alan Krueger and David Laitin for some good heads-up work. And kudos to Representative Waxman for following up.
We'll see what the final report says, along with what explainations they have for the discrepency. But if a publicly traded corporation was busted on an earnings statement like that, the SEC would be all over them like a pit bull on a porkchop.
Splash, out
Jason
UPDATE: The first draft of this post incorrectly refers to Waxman as a Senator. I have corrected the text and regret the error.
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