See no evil

Jonathan Landay of Knight-Ridder describes the administration's new method of fighting terrorism.

The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

Several U.S. officials defended the decision, saying the methodology used by the National Counterterrorism Center to generate statistics had flaws, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.

In other news, President Bush announced that the OMB would no longer be issuing an annual budget.  Several US officials defended the decision saying the methodology the OMB used to calculate deficits was flawed.