Reuters tells us today, in its oh-so-mainstream-media way, that

The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said on Tuesday.

The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.

What Reuters doesn’t tell us though is what prompted the State Department and their intelligence buddies to come clean this time around. They said that last year they confused some numbers. What happened as a result?

The State Department last year initially released erroneous figures that understated the attacks and casualties in 2003 and used the figures to argue that the Bush administration was prevailing in the war on terrorism.

It later said the number of people killed and injured in 2003 was more than double its original count and said “significant” terrorist attacks — those that kill or seriously injure someone, cause more than $10,000 in damage or attempt to do either of those things — rose to a 20-year high of 175.

Unfortunately, maybe because he doesn’t read much, Pres. Bush hasn’t heard about these “new” numbers. He thinks things are going well, and told a room full of people just that as recently as March of this year, 2005, when he gave a speech at The National Defense University. He actually said:

…terrorists are less likely to endanger our security if they are worried about their own security. When terrorists spend their days struggling to avoid death or capture, they are less capable of arming and training to commit new attacks. We will keep the terrorists on the run, until they have nowhere left to hide.

Well, according to the State Department, there are still plenty of places to hide, and terrorists aren’t having to run very fast. Bush then went on to, incredibly, list for everyone a bunch of reasons why “we’re more secure,” even though we’re not. It mostly had to do with some relatively minor successes other countries have had dealing with terrorism, probably in spite of his Administration.

Finally, in stunning, Freudian feats of denial, blame and projection (or Rovian Orwellianism, take your pick), Bush actually talks about the vagaries of dictatorship (guffaw), tyranny (thigh slap), radicalism (choke) and the virtues of opposition and dissent (huh?). He wraps it up with an analysis of how dictators tend to – get this – blame and project. I swear, I couldn’t make this stuff up:

Our strategy to keep the peace in the longer term is to help change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror, especially in the broader Middle East. Parts of that region have been caught for generations in a cycle of tyranny and despair and radicalism. When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme. And to draw attention away from their social and economic failures, dictators place blame on other countries and other races, and stir the hatred that leads to violence.

Stir the hatred that leads to violence? Draw attention away from domestic failures? Does this guy ever look in the mirror? Or is that where he gets all his best material?

He goes on with absurd stuff, seriously, about honest representative government, rule of law, and free and fair elections. We’d print more here, but it’s just too painful. Read on though, if you must.