Don't Mention The War!

By Cernig

First comes the news that Condi Rice thought hard about delaying the scheduled State Dept. report on world terrorism figures at a crucial stage in the national debate over whether her boss has been competently waging the war on terror. The report shows that terrorist attacks have increased again this last year:

A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

The annual report's release comes amid a bitter feud between the White House and Congress over funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and a deadline favored by Democrats to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year's edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.

Ultimately, they decided to issue the report on or near the congressionally mandated deadline of Monday, the officials said.

Then comes news that the White House wants to put of talking about whether the surge is a success or not until September - because they realise that even by then they may have little sign of any such success. To the White House, such lack of success simply means trying the same thing for longer still:

The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.

...In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of President Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.

That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week.

All of this just days after the Iraqi government suddenly decided that it would no longer release civilian casualty figures.

Clearly the Bush administration's idea of having a debate at this time...is to not have one. To refuse to be accountable and to supress counts. Yet in the past they've always been quick to crow about fleeting successes in the war on terror or to tout metrics in other matters of policy when they show the administration's policies in a good light.

The news must be that there is no good news for Condi's boss and his failed policies.