The State Department acknowledged a significant undercount of terrorism incidents in its annual report on terror. It had earlier said that the report demonstrated the Administration's success in its fight against terror.
CNN reports:
"Nobody has suggested that the war on terrorism has been won," responded Powell. "The president has made it clear that it is a war that continues and that we have to redouble our efforts."
The government's goal in releasing the corrected report "is to give the American people the facts," he said.
The State Department offered the following explanation for the error:
"Based on our review, we have determined that the data in the report is incomplete and in some cases incorrect. Here at the Department of State, we did not check and verify the data sufficiently," the statement said.
At his briefing with reporters, Boucher said, "We got the wrong data and we didn't check it enough. I think that's the simplest explanation for what happened."
He added, "the errors that were made, we're still trying to get to the bottom of. Apparently they were different types. It was several errors that led to a significant omissions in the figures."
Shocking incompetence. If this had been a Democratic Administration, the media would have announced a new scandal--TerrorGate--and Congress would have held five sets of hearings into what would be decried as "how the critical defense of the homeland was manipulated for political ends."