Errors on Terror
Krugman Op-ed:
The always objective Dr. Krugman concludes:
[The adminstration's "Terrorist Threat Integration Center's] latest report, released in April, claimed to document a sharp fall in terrorism. "You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage declared. But this week the government admitted making major errors. In fact, in 2003 the number of significant terrorist attacks reached a 20-year peak.DOH! So who uncovered this massive mistake? An economist, of course, Alan Krueger. Dr. Kreuger attributes the mistake to incompetence.
The always objective Dr. Krugman concludes:
Maybe...In any case, the incompetence explanation is hardly comforting....Think of it as just one more indication that Mr. Bush isn't really serious about this terrorism thing. He talks about terror a lot, and invokes it to justify unrelated wars he feels like fighting. But when it comes to devoting resources to the unglamorous work of protecting the nation from attack — well, never mind.
posted by david burnstein at 8:14 AM
1 Comments:
An interesting accounting problem, ie, how to weigh not just frequency of "significant" terrorist events but also their "magnitude" and what latter concepts means, ie, number killed [plus degree of kinship to W], value of target destroyed, cost to terrorists, strategic implications, eg, part of a pattern vs isolated event, performance wit, eg, note left claiming inspiration from W's terrific Crawford brush-clearing adventures, extent of Mossad involvement, eg, no terrorist action is ever carried out on sabbath or on any of the major Jewish holidays, etc.
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